The Woman Destroyed (Harper Perennial Modern Classics)

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Non ipotecare il futuro. Facile a dire. Lo vedevo, il futuro. Si estendeva davanti a me a perdita d’occhio, piatto, nudo. Non un progetto, non un desiderio. Non avrei scritto piú. E allora, che cosa avrei fatto? Che vuoto, dentro di me, attorno a me. Inutile. I greci chiamavano i loro vecchi «mosconi». «Inutile moscone», si dice Ecuba nelle Troiane. Sono io. Sono rimasta folgorata. Mi domandavo come si possa riuscire ancora a vivere quando da se stessi non si spera piú niente.” Witty, immensely adroit … These three women are believable individuals presented with a wry mixture of sympathy and exasperation.” La forma è quella del diario dove la protagonista, Monique, annota gli avvenimenti aggiornandoci sul suo declino psicologico.

De Beauvoir plays with narrative form: a 1st person narrative, an inner monologue, a diary - and the three pieces build up an image of women and their fragile sense of identity and belonging. L’ultimo è un monologo che ha il suono di un grido disperato, basta leggerne l’epigrafe e la prima riga per capirlo:The French author, existential philosopher, political activist, and feminist has remained best known for The Second Sex (1949). But de Beauvoir also put her social theories, especially those pertaining to affairs of the heart, into several works of fiction. While de Beauvoir shows us these three women in periods of crisis, some shorter, some longer, it is also plain that the roots of their sorrow run deep, their happiness built on unreliable foundations, they have to carry the burden - particularly marked in the final story, of social expectation. The first and the last women really aren't even dealing with their own crises but are caught up in the effects of the crises of the men in their lives, the different manifestations of resignation in man and son, followed eventually by the woman coming to face as well with her own shortcomings so all three form a triptych of reaction to loss and pain: resignation, anger, the distraction of ambition. The last woman is left reeling by the husband's mid-life crisis as manifested in adultery. Her friend advises her to see a gynecologist, a nice touch with it's suggestion that the suffering woman must finally give birth to herself, but that is no easy process: La femme rompue“, The Woman Destroyed, is written by one of the most controversial feminists, Simone de Beauvoir. The book was originally published in 1967. They don't like being seen through: as for me I'm straight I don't join their act I tear masks off.” In “The Age of Discretion,” the woman is faced with a young married son who suddenly tears himself free from her sphere of influence. She rejects him completely, refusing to see him. At the same time, she observes that she no longer seems to bring her husband any kind of happiness. She and he are not in accord over her treatment of their son.

She smiled rather pityingly. "But, Mama, after fifteen years of marriage it is perfectly natural to stop loving one's wife. It's the other thing that would be astonishing!" After reading On the Beach it was I guess inevitable that any half way reasonable book would stand out as an easy four star read, the intensity of the characters presented means that you don't suspect that they would be ruined or flop over if exposed to the rain of the Paris basin. Indeed the Monologue with it's use of punctuation and paragraphs seems a little old fashioned even for 1967 in its presentation of a continuous stream of consciousness embittered monologue, but then I'm not an upper middle class Parisian woman in the late 1960s perhaps they did think in sentences and paragraphs. Generally while intense and humane, the writing doesn't have some hard to describe additional quality that would lead me to want to force the book in to every one's hands as one might, if moved by a five star read.Though The Woman Destroyed was generally praised, not all reviewers were as enthusiastic as the one above. Following is a review of the American edition that, though critical of the book’s tone, nonetheless offers a succinct synopsis of each story: The writing device of "The Woman Destroyed" is not as psychologically oppressive to me as that of "The Monologue," because it includes dialogue quoted from various people and therefore is not a completely closed monologue. However, Monique's obsessions don't interest me much, and no advice that I would consider practical emerges until the very end, when Monique visits her younger daughter, Lucienne, in New York City: No se trata de víctimas, sería pecar de condescendiente considerarlas “mujeres anuladas por relaciones absorbentes”, como se dice en la contraportada. Más bien son, como dijo la propia autora, tres mujeres que se sienten fracasadas, rotas. La única que puede considerarse víctima, que de hecho lo es, es la protagonista de la segunda de las historias, pero no tanto por sus relaciones como por la infancia que sufrió y que la condicionó de por vida. Las otras dos son mujeres cultas, inteligentes y liberales que eligieron la forma en la que quisieron vivir y que ahora pasan por circunstancias desagradables, circunstancias que pueden afectar tanto a hombres como a mujeres y que son sobrellevadas dependiendo de la personalidad más que del género. One of the most influential thinkers of her generation draws us into the lives of three women, all past their first youth, all facing unexpected crises in these three “immensely intelligent stories about the decay of passion” ( The Sunday Herald Times). In earlier days I never used to worry about old people. I looked upon them as the dead whose legs still kept moving.”

E’ la notte di Capodanno. Mentre scoppiano i festeggiamenti, una donna, nella solitudine della sua casa, inveisce contro tutti. E’ una voce disperata rotta da un angoscioso dolore che l’ha resa cinica e rabbiosa... The Woman Destroyed is Simone de Beauvoir’s beguiling fictional analysis of womanhood’s complexities. The work is a collection of three novellas, each featuring a different woman in crisis and trapped by circumstance. “The Age of Discretion” recounts the desperation of a successful professor and writer who feels her power and influence over her newly-married son slipping. “The Monologue” centers around an aging, rich woman sits at home, alone, and pours out her bitterness in a stream of consciousness diatribe. In the title story, an older heroine struggles to rediscover happiness after her husband confesses to an affair. The three stories, each captivating in its beautifully profound exploration of the woman’s mind, center around individuals battling the unstoppable passage of time, the inevitably of age, resounding loneliness, the indifference of loved ones, and the unfortunate decay of passion. Although this book was published in 1967 (and the three pieces written at different times), the book this reminded me of most - almost serves as a precedent to - is Ferrante's The Days of Abandonment. Each of these novellas is concerned with a desperately unhappy, no-longer-young woman whose life is going down the drain. Three such monologues, in succession, are an overdose. At the same time, none of the husbands or other characters in any of the stories take on a convincing life of their own.

Bucolic Vermont

La mujer rota" contiene tres relatos breves: La edad de la discreción, Monólogo y, finalmente, La mujer rota. Y qué mejor que las propias palabras de De Beauvoir para hablar de ellos: "He querido hacer escuchar aquí las voces de tres mujeres que se debaten con palabras en situaciones sin salida. Una tropieza con una ineluctable fatalidad, la de la edad. La segunda conjura por medio de un monólogo parafrénico la soledad a donde la ha arrojado su egoísmo exacerbado. La mujer rota es la víctima estupefacta de la vida que ella misma se eligió: una dependencia conyugal que la deja despojada de todo y de su ser mismo cuando el amor le es rehusado. Sería en vano buscar moralejas en estos relatos; proponer lecciones, no; mi intención ha sido totalmente diferente. No se vive más que una sola vida, pero, por la simpatía, a veces es posible salirse de la propia piel. He querido comunicar a mis lectores ciertas experiencias de las cuales participé de esa manera. Me siento solidaria de las mujeres que han asumido su vida y que luchan por lograr sus objetivos; pero eso no me impide -al contrario- interesarme por aquellas que, de un modo u otro, han fracasado, y, en general, por esa parte de fracaso que hay en toda existencia. Referring to the Past: A Review of ‘New York Art Worlds, 1870-1890’ at The Metropolitan Museum of Art I don't have the reading to link these stories to Madame de Beauvoir's philosophical or autobiographical concerns, but across all three stories is a sense of dependency and domination, living through others and living through appearances and of the tremendous grief that ensues when the ploughshare cuts through the mouse's nest I feel that I reference Robert Burn's To a Mouse at least every third or fourth review that I write and plainly I'd best not break that social union . Outre le célèbre Deuxième sexe (1949) devenu l'ouvrage de référence du mouvement féministe mondial, l'œuvre théorique de Simone de Beauvoir comprend de nombreux essais philosophiques ou polémiques.

The first novella, The Age of Discretion, centers around the aging process and the end of careers of both husband and wife. In addition, there’s the bitter disappointment the woman feels after the son she has ‘groomed’ to follow in her footsteps as a professor turns thirty and changes career and political outlook to go into government service. His mother feels it’s all about his wife and father-in-law pushing him to make more money and get a ‘real’ Job. Amazingly she turns against her son in an incredibly brutal way. She throws her son out of her house and says things like “I cannot love anyone I do not respect.” And to her husband: “Do you think I ought to see him again?” [This is their son!] The title story, The Woman Destroyed, is written as a diary over six months or so. A woman has a husband and two daughters, one locally and one in the US that she seldom sees. Her husband admits to her that he is having an affair. With the advice of her friends she agrees to let him continue with it, taking the attitude that “men his age do these things; it will pass.” That turns out to be a mistake. Alexis de Tocqueville, the French thinker who keenly chronicled early American society, described the consequences of ever-increasing choice more than 170 years ago:Kids & husband gone leaving a 44-years old Monique absolutely with nothing just to mention one example. Simone rondaba los 60 años cuando escribió este relato, y yo, que no ando muy lejos, puedo sentir en carne propia cada una de las palabras de esta corta pero sincera, amarga y, al final, resignada historia. “¿Qué hacer cuando el mundo se ha descolorido? No queda más que matar el tiempo.” El relato plantea dos actitudes ante la llegada de la vejez y la pérdida de capacidades, de ilusiones, de metas por las que luchar (no creo que fuera intención de la autora identificar cada una de ellas con el género de los protagonistas y, desde luego, yo tampoco creo que este sea el caso): la indiferencia, el dejarse llevar, aceptar que todo pierde importancia, por un lado, y el rebelarse ante tal situación, el no poder comprender que la merma de capacidades, el deterioro del cuerpo, es imparable, que el deseo acaba por desgastarse, por el otro. “No más proyectos, no más deseos. No escribiré más. ¿Entonces qué haré? Qué vacío en mí, alrededor de mí. Inútil.” En el relato, Simone se centra en esta última forma de encarar la vejez, la de la mujer, un problema que va mucho más allá del miedo a enfrentarse a una muerte cada vez más cercana. “Si hubiera tenido que morir durante la noche, habría estimado que mi vida era un logro. Pero estaba aterrada por ese desierto a través del cual iba a arrastrarme hasta desembocar en la muerte.” El relato es el proceso por el cual esta mujer va aceptando que existe un problema, que experimenta un deterioro físico y mental, que los años han cambiado a su pareja, que su hijo ha elegido un camino bien distinto del que para él había deseado. “En todo caso, durante un tiempo. No miremos demasiado lejos… ¿Eso nos la hará tolerable? No sé. Esperemos. No tenemos elección.” Al final todos sabemos que no hay otro camino que la resignación y saber y poder aprovechar lo que la vida te siga dando o, como Simone pone en la mente de su protagonista, todo aquello que la vida aun no te ha quitado. De Beauvoir sincerely and authentically captures what life is like for middle-aged women in an emotionally resonant work. The stylistic diversity of the three stories successfully reflects the complexities of a woman’s mind and de Beauvoir’s unapologetic portrayal of women ‘past their prime’, replete with their doubts and failures. Each woman is a refreshing alternative to the feminist powerhouse in high demand by those looking for female protagonists, reflecting patterns of life, insecurities, and similarities with any number of women the most unsuspecting reader may know. The unraveling of these women’s lives is accessible and human, a humanity that is deeply intimate and painful. De Beauvoir manages this masterful piece of prose illuminating the inner workings of the middle aged woman’s mind in a way only a pioneer of existentialism could.