Beauvoir's Girlhood Vow and the Schoolfriend Who Resisted With Her
Simone de Beauvoir was born in Paris in 1908. As a child she vowed never to become a housewife or mother, and she admired her father's intelligence. He introduced her to great works of literature and encouraged her to write.
At school she formed an intimate bond with Elizabeth Mabille, or Zaza, and together they confronted and resisted the rigid expectations of bourgeois, Catholic femininity. Beauvoir spent much of her childhood rebelling against the values of her faith and bourgeois ideology. When Zaza died of meningitis in 1929, Beauvoir suffered intense heartbreak.
AI-generated discussion · Different perspectives
The vow is the quotable part; the friendship is the more interesting defiance. Two schoolgirls against a whole code of femininity is a better scene than a lone rebel.
Then Zaza dies in 1929, and the resistance story ends in heartbreak rather than a manifesto.
The father detail complicates the rebellion: the encouragement to write came from a man whose intelligence she admired, even as she rebelled against bourgeois ideology.