Walk into any half-decent bookstore and you’ll find her. Usually, it’s a monochrome cover, a sharp-eyed woman with a cigarette or a serious-looking bun, tucked away in the philosophy or "Women’s Studies" section. Simone de Beauvoir books are everywhere, yet we treat them like dusty museum pieces. We quote "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman" as if it’s a catchy Instagram caption, often forgetting the thousand pages of dense, angry, and brilliant prose that actually surround that sentence.
Beauvoir wasn't just Jean-Paul Sartre’s "plus one" or a sidekick in the existentialist movement. Honestly, she was the one who took those abstract ideas about freedom and dragged them into the real world—into kitchens, bedrooms, and hospitals. She wrote about the stuff men usually ignored: aging, jealousy, the boredom of the bourgeoisie, and the physical reality of a mother’s death.
If you’ve ever felt like her work is too intimidating to start, you’re not alone. But the truth is, her writing is surprisingly conversational and deeply personal. She didn't just write theory; she wrote her life.
The Second Sex: More Than Just a Feminist Bible
Let’s get the big one out of the way. The Second Sex (1949) is the book everyone knows but few have actually finished. It’s massive. It’s dense. It was even on the Vatican’s list of prohibited books for a while, which is basically the 1950s version of a five-star recommendation.
What most people get wrong is thinking this is just a book about how "men are mean." It’s much weirder and more interesting than that. Beauvoir spends hundreds of pages looking at biology, history, and myths to figure out why women are always seen as the "Other." Basically, if Man is the default human being, Woman is the "variation."
- The Problem of the "Other": She argues that men define themselves as the Subject (the "I") and women as the Object.
- The Complicity Factor: Beauvoir was brutally honest about how women sometimes choose the "easy" path of being an object because real freedom is terrifying.
- The Biology Myth: She doesn't deny that we have bodies, but she insists that having a uterus shouldn't determine your entire destiny.
The original English translation by H.M. Parshley was actually kind of a disaster. He was a zoologist, not a philosopher, and he cut out about 15% of the text, including some of her most important philosophical arguments. If you’re going to read it now, make sure you grab the 2009 translation by Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier. It’s longer, but it’s the real deal.
Why Her Fiction Is Actually Secret Philosophy
Beauvoir always said she was an author first and a philosopher second. This kinda shocks people who only know her for her essays. But if you want to understand her ideas about freedom, you have to read her novels.
She Came to Stay (1943) is basically a fictionalized version of a messy real-life "threesome" situation she and Sartre had with a student named Olga Kosakiewicz. It’s a psychological thriller about how another person’s existence can feel like a threat to your own. It’s tense. It’s uncomfortable. And it ends with a literal murder. Not exactly what you’d expect from a philosophy professor, right?
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Then there’s The Mandarins (1954). This one won the Prix Goncourt, France's most prestigious literary prize. It’s a "roman à clef," meaning the characters are based on real people. You’ve got thinly veiled versions of Sartre and Albert Camus arguing about politics in post-war Paris. But the heart of the book is the character Anne, a psychoanalyst who has a passionate affair with an American writer (based on Beauvoir’s real-life lover, Nelson Algren). It’s a huge, sweeping book about whether intellectual life actually matters when the world is falling apart.
The Ethics of Ambiguity: The Starter Kit
If you want the philosophy without the 800-page commitment of The Second Sex, go for The Ethics of Ambiguity (1947). It’s short. It’s punchy.
Basically, Beauvoir was tired of people saying existentialism was depressing or that it meant "nothing matters so do whatever you want." She argues that because there is no God to give us a "script," we are responsible for creating our own meaning. But—and this is the big "but"—you can’t be truly free if you are helping to oppress others. Your freedom is tied to everyone else's.
"To will oneself free is also to will others free."
It’s a call to action. She hates the "Serious Man" who hides behind rules and "The Nihilist" who gives up. She wants you to embrace the fact that life is messy and confusing (ambiguous) and keep moving anyway.
Growing Old and Dying: The Late Masterpieces
In her later years, Beauvoir turned her "surgical" eye toward the things society tries to hide. A Very Easy Death (1964) is a slim memoir about her mother’s battle with cancer. It is devastatingly honest. She describes the tubes, the hospital smells, and the weird guilt of watching someone you have a complicated relationship with slowly fade away. It’s widely considered one of her best pieces of writing because it’s so raw.
She followed this up with The Coming of Age (1970). Just like she did with women in The Second Sex, she did for the elderly here. She called out how society treats old people as "non-beings" or walking corpses. It’s a fierce, angry book that basically says we are all complicit in a system that makes aging a tragedy rather than just another part of living.
Actionable Ways to Start Reading Beauvoir
Don't just buy the biggest book and let it sit on your shelf. Start where your interest actually lies.
- If you love memoirs: Start with Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter. It’s a classic "coming of age" story about a girl breaking away from her strict Catholic upbringing. It’s relatable, even if you weren't born in 1908 Paris.
- If you want a quick philosophical hit: Read The Ethics of Ambiguity. It’s the best "How to Live" guide she ever wrote.
- If you like drama and messiness: Grab She Came to Stay. It’s essentially a high-brow soap opera with existential dread.
- If you're a hardcore feminist: You have to tackle The Second Sex, but do it in chunks. Start with the "Lived Experience" section in Volume II. It’s much more narrative and deals with childhood, marriage, and motherhood.
Simone de Beauvoir books aren't just about "theory." They are about the grit of being alive. She didn't want you to just read her and nod; she wanted you to look at your own life and ask: "Am I living this, or is it being lived for me?"
To truly engage with her work, track down the 2021 release Inseparable (or The Inseparables). It’s a "lost" novel she wrote in 1954 that was deemed too intimate to publish during her lifetime. It explores her intense, tragic friendship with Zaza Lacoin, the girl who shaped her entire understanding of freedom and oppression before they even turned twenty. Reading it provides the missing emotional link to everything she wrote later.