Another Master
- Arthur Bruso
- Jun 9
- 8 min read
A review of the Prime of Life by Simone de Beauvoir
When we discover that our icons conduct their daily affairs and relationships with the same contradictions and messy abandon that we lesser mortals do, there is not the relief that we are all the same, but rather the disillusionment that even our idols make mistakes. This was my reaction after reading Simone de Beauvoir’s autobiography The Prime of Life.
The Prime of Life is the second installment of de Beauvoir’s series of autobiographies. This volume begins in 1929, with the 21-year-old de Beauvoir freshly graduated from the University of Paris. She had already established her lifelong association with Sartre and moved out of her parents’ house. She rented a room from her grandmother in the city of Paris, where she finally felt freedom from the constraints of her immediate family. This arrangement did not entirely sever her family ties, but her grandmother allowed her the independence to come and go freely. That there would be an understanding of propriety and a level of reportage from the grandmother to de Beauvoir’s parents should her behavior warrant it was assumed. Still, de Beauvoir felt independent and took full advantage of the lack of obvious constraints.
Having graduated and taken the teaching exams at university, she secured a part time position at Lycée Victor Durvy and supplemented her income with some private tutoring. This light working schedule gave her much time to explore Paris and its pleasures as well as reestablish her association with Sartre. And it was Sartre to whom she was most excited to spend her time. It should be explained that de Beauvoir wrote about meeting Sartre in university in her first memoir, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter. One of the difficulties of reading The Prime of Life is de Beauvoir structured her memoirs with the intention that the reader would read them all in order. Therefore, she does not summarize or repeat information that was presented in previous volumes. This can cause confusion for those who attempt to read her memoirs as stand-alone works.
De Beauvoir encountered Sartre at university when they were both taking their final exams. She had been introduced to Sartre by a mutual friend. After hearing Sartre’s own philosophical rejection of the bourgeois, she believed that she had found an intellectual match who shared her devotion to freedom. Sartre was not immune to de Beauvoir’s attractiveness. He also found in her a peer who shared his philosophy. He understood that she equaled his intellectual brilliance; however, he was also quick to tell her she needed coaching. They each considered the other as a true soul connection in terms of an essential love rather than something determined by fate. Essential love was a term that Satre coined for the benefit of de Beauvoir. By naming Simone and his relationship with her as essential, he was convincing her that they had a special, unbreakable bond. As he explained, this did not exclude the exploration of other romantic interests for either of them, since they retained their independence and were thwarting the bourgeoisie. Sartre called these extraneous liaisons “contingent.”
De Beauvoir’s rejection of the French bourgeois society she was born into had its roots in her family’s financial failings. Her family had lost their fortune during WWI when the grandfather’s bank collapsed due to bad speculations and the fraud to cover them up. This resulted not only in financial ruin for the family, but also in a social scandal that would follow the various members of the family for years. Trying to regain their financial status resulted in a further series of failed investments all of which reduced Simone’s family to genteel poverty. While they might claim their inherited bourgeois social position, they could not provide the dowery necessary for Simone to marry within her station. Instead, she was encouraged by her father to pursue an education that would provide Simone with the means to find work and become self-sufficient. This further alienated her from early twentieth century French society, since a working woman was viewed as unseemly and a violation of the social code adhered to by the bourgeois. This antiquated social expectation de Beauvoir’s was born into, expected an eligible woman to be educated in the social graces and home management, not to attend university and seek employment to earn their living. Simone decided to reject the constraints of the bourgeois in defiance of a social code she could not be part of and was rejecting her. She was reaffirmed in her repudiation of the bourgeois by the plight of her friend Zaza. Zaza was being compelled into a union that was profitable for her family but repugnant to her. Before this alliance could be legalized, she fell ill with viral encephalitis and died at 21. De Beauvoir blamed the psychological stress for her friend’s fatal illness and was convinced that bourgeois society was a murderous engine of conformity designed to constrain a women’s freedom.
After having been found and chosen by Sartre, de Beauvoir abandoned her cherished independence and freedom by allowing Sartre to dictate the parameters of their relationship. In effect, she trades the misogyny of her father and the restrictions of bourgeois society for the misogyny and restrictions of Sartre. It was Sartre who decided that they would never marry. Instead, that they would enjoy “contingent” loves, and that they would continue to spurn the bourgeois that turned their backs on them. This all seems suspiciously self-serving for Sartre. Sartre lost nothing in this arrangement. As a man, with greater freedom of choice, his status and social standing would not be affected. De Beauvoir was well aware that she was the one who would suffer the most from Sartre’s pact. She endeavored to explain the inequities of Sartre’s plan, but he rejected her rationalizations as dated and cowardly. De Beauvoir accepted Sartre’s terms for a relationship not only because she viewed him as the intellectual superior but because it aligned with her desire to escape the constraints of the bourgeois. She bought into his concept of perfect freedom regardless of the glaring flaws because it defined an ideal she hoped for. Still, de Beauvoir’s acceptance of Sartre’s dictum seems out of character for a woman who advocated for the disassembling of a similar traditional chauvinistic bias and envisioned a new radical future for women. Yet yielding to his authority by allowing him to dictate the rules of their association would serve her future in other ways.
This is what makes the reading of The Prime of Life so infuriating. Through de Beauvoir’s own telling, she, time after time acquiesces to the will of Sartre even when she internally questions his authority. She relates a conversation they had regarding the existence of microorganisms. Sarte argued vigorously against the actuality of a microscopic world that had the ability to affect human life. Sartre’s premise was that something cannot truly exist unless it is directly perceived and given meaning by human consciousness. De Beauvoir tolerated these wild counter scientific arguments of Sartre’s as part of his cognitive machinery. She rationalized that they allowed for his greater and broader theories of human freedom.
De Beauvoir’s acceptance of his arguments seemed more than likely a way to avoid opposing Sartre, risking alienation, and losing access to his self-declared golden brain. De Beauvoir gained world-renowned status being the companion to the individual who was considered the greatest genius in mid-century France. Her pride in his designation and her need to retain her secondary position at his side becomes more obvious as the book goes on. De Beauvoir knew that as a woman navigating a deeply sexist society, she would face an impossible uphill battle against closed patriarchal institutions trying to access the global intellectual mainstream entirely on her own. By anchoring her life to Sartre, she gained immediate entry into the absolute vanguard of cultural, political, and literary life.
Sartre decided for de Beauvoir that she must become a writer. De Beauvoir had youthful ideas about becoming an author, but she described herself as too indolent (page 52, Prime of Life). When faced with the blank page, she found nothing worthwhile to say and little motivation. She was indifferent to writing about the past because there was no reason to relive it. With these rationalizations against writing, she decided silence was best. Except Sartre had no tolerance for idleness, a condition he relegated to the bourgeois. He ordered de Beauvoir to write because she needed to open her eyes to the manifest glories of life. Under his directive she did.
Her approach to writing her autobiography was phenomenological. Taking her instruction from Sartre’s existentialism lexicon, she presented her life through her actual, sensory lived experiences. Her aim was to capture the exact feeling of her existence as she had lived it. She was determined not to present herself in a stereotypical feminine way which she perceived as emotional and romantic. As a result, The Prime of Life is dense with detail. Using her diaries as source material, de Beauvoir describes the minutia of all her experiences, from the clothing her companions wore, to the decorations in the café’s she frequented, to the practically word for word retelling of various conversations she was part of. This insistence on her philosophy of the self as something chosen and constructed, becomes a test of endurance for the reader.
In the Introduction de Beauvoir explains that she will not attempt to explain or justify Sartre’s philosophy because only he can discuss his ideas with any authority. Then continuously throughout her book, she does exactly that; she explains and rationalizes Sartre’s philosophical ideas in an attempt to justify her decisions to follow his lead and his orders. She tries heroically to convince her readers that she is maintaining her autonomy and is freeing herself from the constraints of her bourgeois upbringing by her association with someone whose star she believes is on the ascendent. Sartre’s star is on the ascendent, but he needs someone to do his unpleasant, tedious tasks for him – including finding him nubile women for intimate assignations as part of his idea of contingent relationships. Through her teaching, de Beauvoir had access to young women. If de Beauvoir discussed one she found interesting with Sartre, he would, under the guise of psychological material to be analyzed, encourage de Beauvoir to allow him to meet her and have them join and form a trio. If she hesitated, he would weaponize Simone’s jealousy as the enemy of freedom. And for her troubles she permanently lost her teaching license.
The Prime of Life is enlightening not for the window into the life of the youthful de Beauvoir starting out on her journey as the premier feminist of her age, but of a young woman who becomes infatuated with a charismatic young man and decides that he is who she will align herself with despite his problematic personality. It offers an account of an intelligent, educated woman who trades the very independence she decided was her right and hands it over to a man. Perhaps she would not be the immortal we now know if she had not, but regardless of her lengthy and verbose rationalizations, she compromised her own freedom to be in that place beside the towering Sartre. To be the second most admired intellectual in France was an achievement that de Beauvoir was proud to have accomplished.
Arthur Bruso © 2026
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