01 Feb The Inseparables
Simone de Beauvoir
This book by Simone de Beauvoir was deemed too intimate to release during her lifetime and then has been lost. Luckily it was found and published now so that we can indulge in this tender and at the same time revolutionary story.
The Inseparables is based on Beauvoir’s childhood friendship with Élisabeth Lacoin even though the two main characters carry other names- Sylvie and André. The two girls, that meet at school, share for that time revolutionary and feminist thoughts. “They teach you in catechism to respect your body. So selling your body in marriage must be as bad as selling it on the street,” Andrée says. Sylvie is bored and intellectually lonely, so meeting this clever, irreverent girl changes her life. Sylvie falls in love with André’s mind. But there is much that society will throw at Andrée to intimidate and flatten her, not least religion and the desire not to disappoint her controlling, conservative mother.