Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter

Book excerpt: “A book that will leave no one indifferent, and no one affected in quite the same way.” —New York Times A superb autobiography by one of the great literary figures of the twentieth century Simone de Beauvoir's Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter offers an intimate picture of growing up in a bourgeois French family, rebelling as an adolescent against the conventional expectations of her class, and striking out on her own with an intellectual and existential ambition exceedingly rare in a young woman in the 1920s. Beauvoir vividly evokes her friendships, love interests, mentors, and the early days of the most important relationship of her life, with fellow student Jean-Paul Sartre, against the backdrop of a turbulent political time.