Work · Simone de Beauvoir
The Woman Destroyed
Three stories—The Age of Discretion, Monologue and The Woman Destroyed—explore crises in identities built around other people.
Understanding the text
Narrative, monologue and diary offer different access to personal blindness.
Key points
- 01
Dependence
Motherhood or marriage can absorb a person's possibilities without guaranteeing security.
- 02
Narration
What the narrators claim does not always coincide with what their accounts reveal.
- 03
Aging
Losing an expected future requires reconsidering past achievements.
How to read it
Read the voices' internal contradictions; compassion does not require believing every justification.
Editions & sources
- Consult the reference 1plato.stanford.edunew tab
- Consult the reference 2iep.utm.edunew tab
- Consult the reference 3gallimard.frnew tab
Summaries and key points are original editorial interpretations. They accompany reading the work and do not replace an edition of the text. Editorial method ↗