Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter (Penguin Modern Classics)

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The impression that you are an " exception " , I think - is due to that " partial blindness ", which you do not realize at all, and to live in peace into a world in which you could not find your place, otherwise. Her father's betrayal of her—he tells her she will have to educate herself and earn her living, then hates her for being a reminder of his own financial failure—was a formative event in de Beauvoir's life, and a source of real bitterness for her; I was impressed, however, at how impartial she manages to be toward her father himself, while coming to reject the set of values he held. Born into a bourgeois family this beautifully deep and intimate account of one girls journey into early womanhood is both a fascinating and intelligent read. I can't say that I am quite certain what de Beauvoir's narrative is, towards the middle of her book I felt it was the loss of Eden.

One day in the place Saint-Sulpice, walking along hand-in-hand with my Aunt Marguerite who hadn't the remotest idea how to talk to me, I suddenly wondered: 'How does she see me? Durante gli esercizi spirituali che precedettero la mia prima comunione, il predicatore, per metterci in guardia contro le tentazioni della curiosità, ci raccontò una storia che esasperò la mia.I felt a certain kinship with Beauvoir as I was reading this: her discovery of the complexity of the adult world and refusal to be treated as a child who did not belong to it, her struggle with the loss of faith and her precocious intellectual interests were things I related to deeply. If you're not interested in philosophy and like a lot to "happen" in your books, it will probably seem hopelessly dry. Simone de Beauvoir jumps on each evocation of her childhood to dissect it, explain it, and draw from it the substance of what will build her over the years.

While this approach sounds too precise for true relaxation, it has actually been far calmer than the (aimless) drift of unstructured activities that had defined my days thus far. This would constantly be a problem she just couldn't comprehend, Simone had no plans to fall in love, to wed, to have children, to live a wife's life. With halfway hall coming up (or having just happened) for second-years, I have been having many conversations regarding the passage of time and the awareness of an end that seems far-off, yet looms closer with every week of term that goes by. God had given me the promise of eternity; I could not ever cease to see, to hear, to talk to myself.One of the many threads running through the book traces de Beauvoir's evolving understanding of signs: where they come from, how they work, and the inescapable gap (despite her early naïvete) between the thing itself and the sign humans have invented to indicate it.

tatăl meu știa că pentru a scrie o operă literară e nevoie de o muncă obositoare, de strădanii, de răbdare; e o activitate solitară.Non solo perché sono nata settant’anni dopo, non solo perché sono italiana e non francese ma soprattutto per il contesto famigliare di alta borghesia conservatrice.

Una bambina eccezionalmente intelligente e precoce, ma allevata da genitori poco vigili, un giorno era andata a confidarsi con lui: aveva fatto così cattive letture che aveva perduto la fede e perso la vita in orrore; egli aveva cercato di riaccenderle la speranza, ma la bambina era contaminata in modo troppo grave: poco tempo dopo egli apprese che si era suicidata.

Un’infanzia, quella di Simone, in cui è continuamente vezzeggiata ed un’adolescenza con turbamenti, ansie ed insicurezze come da manuale.