A Very Easy Death

Beauvoir’s mother Françoise is presented in the narrative as a woman of dual nature, torn between her innate passion for life and her belief in the nobility of self-sacrifice. Consequently, her life was defined by self-abnegation and rancor: “A full-blooded, spirited woman lived on inside her, but a stranger to herself, deformed and mutilated” (51).

Born in 1885 in Verdun, France, to a wealthy banker, Françoise enjoyed a privileged provincial upbringing but felt unloved by her parents, who denied her attention. She attended a convent school (a Catholic boarding school run by nuns), where in the mother superior she found the affection absent at home. However, the school also inculcated in Françoise the obedience that, in Beauvoir’s view, played a large role in constraining her mother for the rest of her life. At the convent school Françoise learned to accept authority unquestioningly and consequently never learned how to think, or live, for herself. She was taught not to enjoy life: A photo of her and the other girls in her class shows them all dead-eyed, buttoned into their stiff uniforms (38). This austere, self-abnegating attitude is what Beauvoir calls in existential terms an “inauthentic way of living”; it repudiates the freedom intrinsic to the self, the freedom that allows one to make one’s life personally meaningful. Françoise remained a devout Catholic for her entire life, and this was a major point of contention between her and her daughter.

The obedience Françoise learned at her convent school in turn made her an obedient wife to her husband, Georges. Living in Paris among Georges’s friends made her self-conscious of her provincial manners, all the more so because she never learned self-confidence. Nevertheless, she didn’t outwardly resent her subordinate role in the marriage until after World War I, when Georges lost his money. Burdened by the housework previously done by servants and confronted with Georges’s increasingly obvious infidelities, Françoise became bitter. Her infliction of her frustration on her daughters is an example of the destruction wrought by self-abnegation.

In sickness, Françoise is able to let go of her rancor and reconciles with herself because her condition demands that she focus on taking care of herself. This transformation in her final weeks of life attests to the fact that every chapter of life is worth living. Moreover, in her tenacious fight for life, Françoise exemplifies the courage needed to brave the suffering and uncertainty of an authentic life. Through this bravery, Françoise shows, you can find a kind of tempered satisfaction in your life, even when you don’t get what you want.

Beauvoir’s father (Françoise’s husband), Georges, was a failed actor who became a lawyer. He liked to think of himself as aristocratic and socialized with people in Paris who he thought were more sophisticated than Françoise’s friends. Along with this, another point of contention between him and his wife was his atheism. Nevertheless, he made Françoise relatively happy in their first decade of marriage. Subsequently, he became the primary cause of Françoise’s unhappiness—a fact unthinkable to her. He made no effort to hide his numerous affairs and absence of affection for Françoise; meanwhile, Françoise, with no friends of her own, became increasingly isolated and embittered by housework. Georges was the shackle on Françoise’s adult life: After he died in 1941, Françoise found herself free to pursue the freedom that she always denied herself and that was always denied to her.