Feminism in Literature/ Simone de Beauvoir

Back to France in the early 20th Century. A lawyer was living a humble life with his wife and two daughters in Paris. He has always hoped to have a son so he passed his passion for theatre and literature to his first daughter and always told her that she had a brain of a man. At the age of 15, Simone de Beauvoir decided she will be a famous writer; she has already been a brilliant student with a special interest in philosophy which she continued studying in the Sorbonne. It was at that time that she met and fell in love with the great French philosopher and writer, Jean-Paul Sartre. On the final examination, she took the second place after him, and although the jury declared she deserved the first place, yet they had to give it to the man. At that time, she was 21 and she was the youngest student to get that degree. Simone and Sartre spent the rest of their life together in an open relationship, they never got married, they never believed in God or religion and they toured the world advertising for freedom and liberation of the mind. They met the great Revolutionary Guevara and they were greeted in Cairo where they both gave lectures in its great university and had several meetings with intellectuals of that age but were rather fascinated with Taha Hussein. While Sartre was the God father for the existentialism movement and philosophy, de Beauvoir had her own interest for women liberation that she is considered by critics a pioneer of feminism. In 1949, she published her book The Second Sex, a feminist manifesto in which she elucidates on her own conceptual believes regarding women oppression in society. She argues that women are always regarded as the Other in the male dominated social construction, this has limited women's success by maintaining the perception that they are a deviation from the normal. She focused on her belief that women are as capable of choice as men, and thus can choose to elevate themselves and move beyond their current status into a higher condition where one takes responsibility for oneself and the world, where one chooses one's freedom. By her death in April 1986, she has left 23 works of literature including novels, short stories and other non fiction works, all focusing on women and their liberation.