Usually, parents always put more care into their first child. As the eldest daughter, Simone was fortunate to receive this treatment. But there is a difference between the care of father and mother. George focused on cultivating her intellectual and spiritual life.
Her father's penchant for reading had a great influence on Simone. Since she was a child, she has felt the strong cultural atmosphere in her home. Almost naturally, she was also hooked on reading.
On the one hand, the love of reading is due to the influence of his father, and on the other hand, it is also caused by the financial situation of the family. The family's financial conditions are limited, and there are almost no decent toys for her, while there are many books at home. Naturally, little Simone treats books as toys, and reading books is a form of entertainment.
In fact, she does find pleasure in books: the books are picturesque, the books have all kinds of wonderful toys, and what she can't get in real life can be obtained in books.
George was delighted to see that his daughter loved to read. He consciously guided Simone to develop good reading habits. When his daughter reads aloud, he listens quietly, and when he finds that the reading is wrong, he will point out and correct it in time; if she can read aloud in large sections without making mistakes, he will encourage it, usually gently touching his daughter's little face and saying happily: "Well, good boy, good!" How clever! ”
Not only in reading, but also in writing, George also pays attention to the cultivation of his daughter. When Simone was very young, George went out on business trips, and every letter she wrote to him was preserved. George revised each letter word for word before sending it back to her. These circled words reflect his fatherly love. George also asked his daughter to silently write the original text of the work of the great writer Hugo as a way to exercise her memory.
He also specially compiled a small anthology of literary works for his daughter to cultivate her literary interest and taste. And Simone's daily life beyond that, George did not interfere in any way. In short, Simone felt that her father treated himself like an adult, and therefore had a feeling of equality and pride. She respected her father, but was not afraid of him.
Françova plays the opposite role. Of course, she also attached great importance to the education of her daughter, personally accompanying little Simona to school, going to church for Mass, and so on. But she focused on Simone's daily life. In her mother's eyes, Simone was always a little child who needed to be cared for and disciplined, and everything she needed to be managed.
Therefore, Françova is very specific and meticulous in her care of her daughter, and can also be said to be meticulous. Under this care, Simone's relationship with her mother is unequal. In a sense, she was somewhat afraid of her mother, or rather, in her daily life, she cared deeply about her mother's attitude: her praise would make her happy, and criticism would make her uncomfortable. Sometimes Françova didn't even have to express her dissatisfaction in words, and just frowning would make her daughter feel uneasy.
Overall, Simona's childhood was spent in a peaceful and peaceful family atmosphere. The intimate and harmonious relationship between her parents gave her a sense of security. Growing up, Simona saw the smiling faces, caresses and encouragement of her parents, nannies and others, and was almost never subjected to coercion and malice.
Simona has a full sense of freedom, healthy, lively, confident, her personality and behavior are even a bit like boys, a "tomboy", without the weak, submissive, inferior personality of traditional women, and almost unaware of the difference between men and women. This was of great significance to Simone's life.
For children, the other side of freedom is willfulness. There is also some coddling in the tolerance of adults. Sometimes, as long as things don't go according to little Simone's wishes, she will lose her temper, lie on the ground and roll, and even beat herself to a purple and a blue piece.
Once, her mother received a guest at home, and Simone stayed by, and the guest took a plum in her hand. She took it and began to peel it. The mother stopped and said, "Don't peel the skin!" She immediately threw away the plums and lay on the ground shouting, making her mother very embarrassed in front of the guests.
Another time was on the street. Simone came to a square with her family. She found a dirt field and squatted there playing with the mud. Her mother called her up, and she ignored it. The nanny Louise forcibly pulled her, and she shouted loudly, and her legs were dragged to the ground, and she walked like this across the long Raspay Avenue. Pedestrians on the road kept casting surprised glances.
A middle-aged woman who walked across from her, thinking Simona was being abused, couldn't help but shout sympathetically, "Poor child! At the same time, he pulled out a handful of candy and gave it to her. But instead of accepting the sympathetic condolences, the "poor boy" flew up and kicked at the well-meaning man.
The family was helpless against this scene. Father George always exclaimed, "This kid is so unsociable!" Relatives and friends unanimously commented: "Simone is stubborn like a donkey!" Simone found that this form of resistance often worked, and eventually the adults obeyed her. In this way, sometimes she is not particularly why, just wants to get a sense of disobedience satisfaction, and does things against the will of adults.
A picture of Simone in childhood vividly reflects her personality: it is a "family portrait" in which everyone in the family smiles at the camera, and Simone is the only one who, at the moment when the cameraman is about to press the shutter, suddenly twists her head to the side and sticks out her tongue to make a grimace. So this naughty image is forever fixed on the photo paper.
[This article is excerpted from the book Beyond the Second Nature: A Hundred Years of Beauvoir (by Huang Zhongjing, Central Party School Press, 2007 edition)]