Today, April 14, marks the 36th anniversary of the death of the French thinker and writer Beauvoir.
Beauvoir is a representative feminist, thinker of the 20th century, but also a well-known Novelist in France, in the stars of the Left Bank of Paris, Beauvoir is like a sword piercing the male forest, but also with her dazzling and insightful thinking, inspire women to think about their own language and survival positioning. But for a long time, what people talked about most was her relationship with her partner Sartre, a deep female thinker, who was always shrouded in Sartre's shadow.
However, Beauvoir's friends believe that she had chosen her own path long before Beauvoir met Sartre, and it can be said that Sartre's appearance accelerated Beauvoir's emergence as a philosopher, but he did not change her life path. This highly affirmed friend of Beauvoir is Zaza, Beauvoir's best friend.
Beauvoir recorded his friendship with Zaza in his autobiography Lady Duanfang. This teenage friendship had a profound impact on her. She and Zaza studied together, talking about literature, philosophy and views on the world, while the teacher called the two "inseparable." Zaza's hasty death at the age of 21 dealt a big blow to Beauvoir. Based on this female friendship, she tried to revive Zaza with literature through the story of Sylvie and André, but Beauvoir was still dissatisfied with her story and did not publish it publicly.
After her death, her adopted daughter Sylvie Beauvoir found the manuscript, which had been sealed for many years, and published it under the name Of Inseparable. Through "Inseparable", we can see a Beauvoir that is different from the male central narrative. It shows the easily overlooked friendship of women, and the rebellion of the female figure under the male gaze, and through a series of dazzling symbols, sees a different Beauvoir.
Written by | Xia Zhou
How did friendship shape her?
Many people, even if they have not read Beauvoir's "The Second Sex", are familiar with Beauvoir's point-in-cheek words in this work: "Women are not born, but are created." And "Inseparable" echoes this famous saying in a literary way, and the story of Andrey and Sylvie in the novel echoes the friendship between Beauvoir and Zaza in reality. Zaza's untimely death dealt a great blow to Beauvoir and forced her to look at her life again and again, thinking about the meaning of being a woman and the meaning of human existence, all of which also sowed the seeds for Beauvoir to become a famous novelist and philosopher.
It is safe to say that this friendship largely shaped Beauvoir's thinking about the fate of women and the existence of human beings themselves. Through her tragic account of Sylvie's fate (which is also Zaza's), we can see that her reflections on socio-cultural discipline and patriarchy about women are also carved out by herself after constant collisions with life.
Becoming Beauvoir, by Kate Kirkpatrick, CITIC Publishing Group, translated by Liu Haiping, March 2021.
Kate Kirkpatrick mentions in Becoming Beauvoir that as a teenager, Beauvoir experienced a rupture in her parents' emotional relationship: her family's financial situation was much worse than before, and her mother, Françoise, was thrifty and tried to maintain her duties as a "good wife and mother", but her father George lingered in brothels and gambled, and was furious when his wife asked him about the necessary costs for living expenses. Fortunately, Beauvoir met his girlfriend Zaza, who was "natural, humorous, outspoken and bold, and maverick in a conservative style." They studied, read, and talked about philosophy and their favorite literature. Zaza's appearance filled the love that Beauvoir had not been able to get from her mother, illuminating her girlhood.
This experience was written by Beauvoir into the novel Inseparable. Compared with the sharpness and sharpness of "The Second Sex", and the friendship between Andrea and Sylvie is softer and more "childish". But it also invisibly makes Beauvoir more "approachable", allowing readers to see the ups and downs of two French girls in the twentieth century. In the novel, Andrea and Sylvie met as girls. Sylvie initially followed the rules and believed in the meaning of religion, and would stomp toys written "Made in Germany" on the ground; André was thin but clear-eyed, and her words were full of intelligence and uninhibitedness that girls of the same age did not have. As soon as Sylvie saw Andrea, she was fascinated by her unique atmosphere, and Andrei told her experience of being burned by fire in an understated tone, and Sylvie thought: "A little girl who has been burned alive, this is not something you can meet every day." ”
Stills from the movie "Lovers of the Flower God Cafe".
Just as Beauvoir was deeply attracted to Zaza, Sylvie developed a friendship with Andrea, and saw a different world through this rebellious girl who liked to imitate the teacher's speech. In the process of spending time with Andrea, Sylvie experienced unprecedented happiness and sincerely thought that Sylvie was his "genius girlfriend". With the help of Sylvie's mouth, Beauvoir unabashedly expressed his admiration for Zaza and his fear of losing his beloved. Sylvie said bluntly: "My inner emptiness, daily boredom and boredom has only one root: Andrea is not there. I wouldn't have survived without her. At this time, Sylvie may not have been exposed to illness and death, but secretly decided that if One day Andrea left this world, she would also fall to the ground, waiting to be reunited with her friends at the gates of heaven.
The good times did not last long, but this beautiful female friendship took a sharp turn as André was forced to interrupt her studies and prepare to become a bride — and André and Pabuka Blondale's relationship was frequently blocked. Mrs. Caral offered to be sent to England if André was not engaged, but the other party was reluctant to marry early on the grounds of taking care of her father, although he understood that his lover could not bear a long separation. When Sylvie angrily protested to Pabuka Blondale, he thought André was too vulnerable. This seemingly agreeable relationship ended with Andrea's depression with acute encephalitis.
At this point, the fates of the two girls have embarked on the opposite path: when Sylvie gradually changed the image of a "well-behaved girl" through continuous learning, and exchanged her own efforts for freedom; Andrey had to obey her mother's arrangement, give up her studies, and enter the role that had been prescribed for her in society, obliterating the original unique personality. In real life, when Beauvoir was able to talk to Sartre about philosophical issues and eventually became a famous philosopher, Zaza, like Andrey, ended his life a month before his 22nd birthday.
Death dealt a heavy blow to Beauvoir. Beauvoir had to appeal to words for this friendship, trying to reflect on the roots of tragedy by repairing the wounds of the heart. Therefore, telling the story of Sylvie and André's friendship is also a way for Beauvoir to revive his beloved girlfriend through literature and explore the meaning behind it.
Andrea or Zaza:
Their deaths were a "mental murder."
When Sylvie first met André, she felt that André's best point was not his excellent academic performance, or proficiency in violin and ability to make truffle chocolate balls, but his keen personality. She believes that this personality was given to Andrei by God and "presented in the most moving way, which amazed me." I thought to myself: Andrea must be that kind of prodigy, and someone will set up a biography for her in the future."
However, in real life, it was Sylvie himself who gradually changed his views on religion and was able to go to the Sorbonne University to continue his studies in philosophy (the real-life Beauvoir also became a shining star), but André had to obey his mother's arrangement and was forced to interrupt his studies. Why did the genius girlfriend in Sylvie's eyes gradually fall, and Sylvie went the opposite path? In Inseparable, Beauvoir tried to prove that it was this "maverick" that killed André. Because of the society at that time, Andrey's family, the most unadmissable thing was this "difference".
Beauvoir's adopted daughter believes that Zaza cannot "learn to adapt," and "this eerie word means embedding yourself in a prefabricated mold with an empty shell prepared for you, next to other spaces." But everything that exceeds the space will be suppressed, crushed, and discarded like scrap. ”
As Sylvie and Andrey's friendship deepens, she is able to enter Andrey's family from school and see how the family disciplines André as the smallest unit of patriarchy. When Sylvie travels to André's house to play and watches her female companion skillfully do housework and spend a long time choosing clothes and fabrics for her sisters, the tragedy of André's fate is also revealed: André comes from a radical Catholic family, her father is the president of the "Federation of Fathers of Many-Child Families", and her mother is deeply respected by the Parish of St. Thomas Aquinas.
Sylvie found that although Andrea did not need to make a living by teaching like herself, the good family situation happened to be a cage on her - as the "second daughter" of the family, she had to obey her mother's arrangement for herself, she not only had to take care of her sister, when her sister got married, she also had to obey her mother's arrangements, and was forced to interrupt her studies and plan for her marriage, because such a Catholic family could not let her have the right to choose her own marriage, because "it was her turn".
Andre told Sylvie that her mother did not live for herself a day, and she was forced to accept the marriage arranged by her mother, but Mrs. Carale was still so domineering, the novel records a total of two anddre's relationships, but they are both obstructed by Mrs. Caral, and even Sylvie's premise of being a guest and playing with her female companion since she first got there was a Catholic follower who wanted her to persuade Andrey.
Beauvoir (right) with Zaza (left).
For this phenomenon, Beauvoir deconstructed the concept of "motherhood" in The Second Sex. She pointed out that because women have long been bound to the private sphere and difficult to enter the public sphere to realize their personal value, she will instinctively reject her daughter while identifying with the Philus Center, and even because her life is a foregone conclusion, she will instinctively reject the possibilities of her daughter. Indifference and hatred perpetuate the "mother-daughter" relationship of power control, and at this level, the mother becomes an accomplice of patriarchy, and the daughter of the victim will become the perpetrator again by imitating the mother when she does not have enough sense of resistance, maintaining the operation of patriarchal society in a closed loop. It is under this mechanism that Mrs. Caralr naturally went from being a victim of marital misfortune to the perpetrator of destroying her daughter's happiness and indirectly leading to her death.
Sadly, Andrea expressed her criticism of traditional marriage before she encountered her own love tragedy. Under Mrs. Caral's arrangement, her sister Marlu kept dating. Mrs. Caral did not care about her daughter's feelings, and would only say all the time: "Either enter the monastery or get married, there is no way out for celibacy." Andrey felt sorry for her sister, who satirized the mothers' absurd theory that "when fiancés and fiancées say 'I do' at a wedding, there is love at first sight between them." She easily punctured this lie, believing that it was a very "convenient" theory, because "with it, you don't have to worry about the emotional world of your daughters anymore, and God will give you what you need anyway."
Andrey did resist, and in order to express her dissatisfaction with her mother's control of herself, she swung high in the air in spite of her safety, just to feel good in the sky; in order not to visit relatives and friends, attend garden parties, take care of her younger siblings, and deliberately cut her legs with an axe. But this tactic, which appeared rebellious or violent in her teenage years, is not enough to resist the fate that has long been arranged, and it is more like a little cleverness in dealing with patriarchy.
On the other hand, even if Andrea can see through the marriage scam of "the fate of her parents and the words of a matchmaker", she cannot really see through the causes of her own love misfortune. Disillusioned with "romantic love," André, as a devout Catholic, tried to rationalize her suffering with religion. Beauvoir's adopted daughter said: "The tragedy of Zaza is that, in the deepest recesses of her heart, an ally secretly supports the enemy: she does not have the courage to rebel against a sacred and beloved authority, so she dies from the sanctions imposed on her by that authority." ”
The light and abyss of female friendship
It is worth mentioning that Sartre, who had read the manuscript of the novel, thought that the novel was not worth publishing at all, and Beauvoir himself hid it deep in a drawer until his adopted daughter discovered the story and was able to publish it. Sartre's contemptuous tone may not be a denial of Beauvoir's literary talent, after all, she won the French Goncourt Literary Prize for her novel "Celebrity Flow", becoming the third woman to receive this award. Sartre even used it as a reason to stop writing novels, claiming that the novel "explored the problems of this era better than I did." His denial of "Inseparable" may point to the subject matter, compared with the revelation of the life of famous intellectuals of the Left Bank faction in "Celebrity Affair", the friendship between the two women is somewhat "insignificant".
The Merry Makoto, by Beauvoir S. D. ), Translated by Xu Jun, Edition: Shanghai Translation Publishing House, October 2013.
In fact, from Achilles and Patrox in the Iliad to Roland and Olivier in the French epic "The Song of Roland", there is no shortage of records and praises for "male friendship" in literature. In stark contrast, there is the denigration and neglect of "female friendship" . In ancient Greece and Rome, people often thought that "loyalty" and "strength" belonged to men's qualities, and women were too fragile to have the "highest level of friendship"; in the sixteenth century, the French writer Montaigne put forward the concept of "one soul two body" in his famous "On Friendship", arguing the importance of friendship, but excluding women, because in his view, "the ordinary ability of women is not enough to promote this friendship."
Even in contemporary society, questions about whether women can form true friendships still fill every corner of everyday life. Marilyn Aron and Theresa Donovan Brown sharply attacked this phenomenon in Girlfriends: A History of Female Camaraderie, arguing that when the mass media tirelessly portrayed "vile circles of sinister and vicious teenage girls" and women who competed with men, they continued the traditional stereotype of women and denigrated the value of "female friendship." However, if we salvage novels, autobiographies, and even their letters written by women, we can glimpse the breadth of women's friendships.
Girlfriends: A History of Female Friendship, by Marilyn Aron / Teresa Donovan Brown, Edition: Thought Society| Social Sciences Literature Press, September 2020.
When Montaigne dismissively says that "the female soul cannot withstand the pressures of such a close and enduring relationship", Mrs. Rowland asks her closest female friend, Susan Grandchamp, to witness herself on the guillotine, hoping that this will reduce the fear her friends have caused during this abominable journey, and she is sure that she has not lost her tenacity because of this terrible test. Grandchamps stuck to her promise to Roland, dressed in the clothes they had worn when they last met, standing at the foot of the Nine Bridges in Paris, bravely watching her beloved friend.
This "female friendship" formed because of common ideals is by no means an isolated case. In the United States of the eighteenth century, for example, a group of women came together with a vision of a republican form of government. These like-minded women contacted each other by letter, resisted the import of tea, donated money for military defense, and encouraged each other to become "ideal models of patriotism and freedom." Moses Wallen, who came from a family of political families, argued that politics was not only about men but also about women, and she wrote to the historian Catherine Macaulay: "When observation is just and worthy of conscience and character, it does not matter whether the opinion comes from the whispers of private female friends or the bold words of men in Parliament with a thunderous voice." ”
Through "Inseparable", it can also be seen that when female friends use letters to each other to tell each other their hearts, it is not just a trivial and meaningless "secret in the boudoir". They will not only express their views on love and marriage, but also think about the meaning of human existence. And their seemingly insignificant hearts, the pain of disillusionment of romantic love, also prove that under the shackles of patriarchy, "uninhibited personality" can also accelerate women's misfortune - because she cannot be satisfied with discipline, but she cannot easily break through the shackles.
In the preface to Inseparable, Beauvoir's adopted daughter claims that Zaza's sudden death dealt a great blow to Beauvoir, "For many years afterwards, Zaza often sneaked into her dreams, wearing a pink visor hat and a sallow face, looking at her with reproachful eyes. In order to resist nothingness and oblivion, she had to resort to literary magic. ”
Today, we have re-salvaged "Inseparable" and let it surface on the surface of history, which not only helps us understand the growth trajectory of "academic star" Beauvoir, the traceability of her philosophical ideas and feminist views, but also through the growth process of an "ordinary woman", how they are subject to the discipline of gender roles, how to fight against prejudice and "motherhood", or become survivors, or unfortunately become victims of patriarchy.
Recent works on "Women's Friendship".
Fortunately, in recent years, more and more works about "female friendship" have entered the public eye. Mitsuyo Kakuda's "Her on the Other Side"; Elena Ferrante's "Neapolitan Tetralogy", Sally Rooney's "Chat History", and Beauvoir's "Inseparable", all cobbled together a literary map of "female friendship". This kind of writing enriches the image of women, illuminating the subtle and hidden side of women's lives, but also seeing their vastness and complexity.