Chapter Seventy-Two: The Spirit of Supremacy

On the eve of the Second World War, Simonpova and Sartre moved to Paris. She taught at Molière High School between 1936 and 1939, but was expelled for having an affair with Bilga.

Simonpova's first novel, The Supreme Spirit, was written between 1935 and 1937 and was rejected by the two major publishing houses Galimar and Grasse (the novel was published under a different name in 1979).

In 1943, her first novel, The Female Guest, was published. In this book, she describes her relationship with Sartre and Olga through the use of fictional protagonists, detailing her philosophical reflections on the struggle between self-consciousness and the relevance of others. The book was an immediate success.

In 1943, Simonpova was suspended from teaching on one charge. She was accused of seducing a 17-year-old student, Natalie Solo Kina, in 1939.

Natalie's parents formally filed a court charge with Simonpova for seducing minors, which eventually led to the revocation of Simonpova's lifelong teaching license.

After a break in June 1943, Simonpova resumed writing. She also worked for the national radio station (Vichy Radio), during which time Simonpova planned a number of musical programmes for different eras.

Together with Sartre, Raymond Aron, Michel Lesis and other leftist literati, Simonpova founded the magazine: Modern Times, which aims to make people understand existentialism through modern literature.

At the same time, Simonpova was also immersed in literary creation, dabbling in communism, atheism, and existentialism. After completing some of the works, she gained her independence financially. It also allows her to devote herself to writing.

She traveled to various countries (the United States, China, the former Soviet Union, Cuba, etc.), during which time Simonpova became acquainted with many communists, such as Fidel Castchu, Che Guevara, Mao Zedong, and Richard Wright.

In the United States, Simonpova and the American writer Nelson Egling started a love affair like fire. Simonpova wrote more than 300 letters to Eglin.

In 1949, The Second Sex was published and was a great success. More than 22,000 copies were sold in a week, which also set off a pen war, and the Vatican also listed it as a banned book.

In his letter to Modern Times, François Mauriac said: "Now, I know everything about your female shopkeeper's vagina. In her work, Simonpova describes the dismal position of women in society at the time.

At this point, she became a leading figure in the feminist movement. Through mythology, the progress of civilization, religion, anatomy, and traditional customs. Simonpova analyzes the current situation of women at that time. This also caused an uproar in society, especially when it came to matrilineation and abortion, which was considered homicide in society at the time.

Simonpova also has a different view of marriage. Think of it as a middle-class institution. Just as disgusting as a prostitute. Because marriage makes a woman subject to her husband, there is no escape.

In 1954, with "Baume & Mercier". Simonpova won the Prix Goncourt and became one of the world's most widely read writers.

This novel, which details post-war French society, also brought to light her relationship with Eglin, in which Simonpova continues her usual fictional approach.

But Eglin could no longer stand Simonpova's tangled relationship with Sartre, and finally put an end to the relationship. Between July 1952 and 1959, Simonpova lived with Claude Lanzmann.

Beginning in 1958, Simonpova began writing an autobiography, describing her middle class of prejudice, self-inflicted traditions, and her efforts to escape it despite being a woman.

At the same time, she also described her relationship with Sartre, and considered it a complete success. Although their relationship was as passionate as ever, the man and woman were not lovers in the traditional literal sense, and from a long time ago, Simonpova allowed her readers to believe the gossip of public opinion without justification.

In 1964, Die in Silence was published, in which Simonpova described the last days of her mother's life.

In Sartre's opinion, this is one of Simonpova's best works. The strong emotions that emerge from the lines of the work refer to the treatment of dying patients and euthanasia.

While she was suffering the loss of her mother, Simonpova befriended a young woman whom she had always supported, and this woman was Silvia Le Pen (a student in philosophy). Their relationship is very delicate: "Mother and daughter", "friend", "lover" Simonpova tells in the fourth volume of her autobiography, "Everything Said, Everything Done", that her relationship with Sylvia is like that with her friend Zaza fifteen years ago.

Sylvia later became Simonpova's adopted daughter and inherited all of Simonpova's legacy and writings.

Along with Turkish feminists Gisele Alimi and Elisabeth Badander, Simonpova has been influential in the field of women's rights, educating the world about the suffering of women in the aftermath of the Algerian war and since the law allowed abortion.

This was followed by the 343 Petition (Manifestedes343, a petition signed by 343 women demanding freedom from abortion).

Together with Gisele Alimi, Simonpova founded the NGO Choisir, which aims to promote the legalization of voluntary abortion. Throughout her life, Simonpova explored her own world, visiting factories and schools, visiting people from women factory workers to political leaders.

In 1980, after Sartre's death, Simonpova published her autobiographical work The Farewell Ceremony, which recounted how she accompanied Sartre for the last ten years, and described the drugs Sartre took in detail, including the explicit description of the intimate life of the two people, which offended many philosophers.

In August and September 1974, a dialogue with Jean Paul Sartre was published in Rome and described some of Sartre's views on his work, as if he had not left the world.

At the same time, in this book, Simonpova wants to let the world know how Sartre was controlled by Beni Levy, pointing out that Lévy made Sartre admit that there is a certain religious tendency in existentialism, which is not tolerated by atheism.

In Simonbeaua's view, Sartre could no longer derive pleasure from his intellect and could no longer argue philosophically.

She also insinuated that she disliked Sartre's adopted daughter. She summed it up this way: "Sartre's death separates us, and my death does not bring us together. That's it, he's tired of us being entangled for so long. 」

In 1986, Simonpova died in Paris. Her funeral was even more remarkable than Sartre's, and was followed by readers from all over the world, both male and female.

Simonpova was buried in the Montparnasse cemetery in Paris, next to Paul Sartre, wearing a ring given to her by Nelson Eglin.

In 2008, the Simon de Beauvoir Prize was created in honor of Simone de Beauvoir.

Throughout her life, Simonpova promoted existentialism, asking a series of questions about how human beings can find meaning in the absurdity of the world in which they cannot choose to be born.

Despite the connection, Simonbova's work differs from Sartre in that she depicts her characters in a more specific and detailed way, preferring a direct and coherent reflection on her own experiences.

Simonpova's most important work is her The Second Sex, which is considered the "Bible" of the feminist movement.

In The Second Sex, Simonpova argues: "We are not born women, we are women, and if before puberty, and sometimes even from early infancy, our sexuality is determined, it is not because there is some mysterious instinct that directly indicates that she is passive, coquettish, and maternal, but because the influence of others on the child is an element almost from the beginning." So she was indoctrinated from an early age to fulfill the mission of women. The same is true for men. This is the most important point of the book.

(This concept is extracted from the thought of Tertullian): It is precisely because of the different compositions of individuals that we assume different roles and have different attributes, and there are also two sexes. The book proposes that because women have poor physical strength, when life requires physical strength, women feel weak and fear freedom, and men use legal forms to fix women's inferior status, while women are still willing to obey.

She disagreed with Engels' assertion that the transition from a matrilineal clan society to a patrilineal clan society was a regain of power by men, arguing that women had never been given power in history, even in matrilineal clan societies.

She believes that the true emancipation of women requires the right to freely choose their procreations and an over-neutralization of sex. The English translation of her book was a bestseller in the United States and played a large role in shaping the feminist movement since the 60s of the 20th century.

The book provoked protests and even malicious slander for Simonpova. Although Simonpova received little support, it impressed Claude Levi Strauss, who found that Simonpova's work was perfectly acceptable from an anthropological point of view. Some of the great writers of the same period objected to what Simonpova wrote, and there were many slanderers. (To be continued......)