Sexual stereotyping in Sartre's Les Chemins de la liberte´

Abstract

Although sexual stereotyping is a pervasive theme in Les Chemins de la liberte´, it has attracted virtually no critical comment. This is to some extent excusable in the case of L'Age de raison, where sexual stereotyping is largely a manifestation of Sartrean 'bad faith', and thus a 'human' phenomenon subsumable under the ontological preoccupations of the pre-war Sartre, rather than a gender issue involving sexual specificity. In both Le Sursis and La Mort dans l'ame on the other hand, the theme occupies a more clearly central position and is crucial to our understanding of the novel. Not only does it offer a highly pertinent critique of prevailing social and political attitudes at the time of Munich and beyond, it also anticipates many of the concerns that were subsequently to exercise Simone de Beauvoir and later feminists.