The male harem of Simone de Beauvoir: three men in the life of the founder of feminism

The world's most famous female philosopher and part-time founder of feminism Simone de Beauvoir preferred a free relationship. But, despite the fact that the woman promoted such non-binding unions, she herself had permanent men.

Simone was born into a good French family and in her childhood nothing gave her away as a rebel and an atheist, much less a great thinker. Simone grew up an ordinary, intelligent and lively child, except that she was overly impressionable.

The parents sent the girl to a Catholic school, where exaltation and Simone brought herself to tears with prayers. Sometimes the young Beauvoir worked so hard that she began to think that she could hear the voices of angels, which led the girl to extreme religious delight.

But everything changed with age, when Simone became a teenager. The turning point came after an incident when one of the priests of a Catholic school humiliated Beauvoir. Reprimanding her for some minor offense, the holy father put his hand on her head and pressed to give the girl the most submissive pose and so that she could not raise her eyes.

Most of the school's students would not consider this a humiliation and immediately forgot this case, but in the mind of Simone de Beauvoir, it was deposited as a symbol of the system's pressure on a free person. She was constantly thinking about it and these thoughts helped her to form as a person in many ways.

When Simone turned 14, she suddenly realized that there was no God and she felt so lonely in this world that she burst into tears from despair. Now she could rely only on herself in this cruel world, and this scared the vulnerable teenager.

At the same time, Beauvoir began to communicate with her cousin, who did not lead a completely decent lifestyle. From him, the girl learned about the seedy places of Paris and their inhabitants. Simone began to visit evening bars in dangerous areas of the French capital, while she was not attracted by the sin and filth that reigned in these establishments. The girl liked to watch, listen and draw conclusions.

By this time, Simone had formed as a person and one of the most striking features of her character was absolute uncompromising. The girl took the path of rebellion, while her views on love were very radical. She believed that carnal joys are inseparable from spiritual intimacy, and you can only connect your life with a man once and for life.

The Beauvoir family had finally gone bankrupt by the time Simone graduated from school, and her parents rightly inspired the girl that only a good education would help her become independent without money and break out into people. Therefore, the young rebel entered the Catholic University, where she studied mathematics, and then the University of Saint-Marie-de-Neuilly, where she received a degree in philology.

In 1927 , Simone de Beauvoir graduated from the Sorbonne with a degree in Leibniz philosophy and became the ninth woman to graduate from this university. Just a year later, in 1928, the woman received a Bachelor of Arts degree. While studying literature, Beauvoir met Jean Paul Sartre.

They quickly became close, as they were surprisingly similar in their views. One of the teachers at the same time noted that Beauvoir was a stronger philosopher than Sartre, but he, thanks to his unique intelligence, surpassed Simone. Together they were happy and they were not embarrassed by the constant changes taking place inside.

Simone's condition was constantly changing — she could be a dry intellectual one day, and the next turn into a capricious girl. The same thing happened with Sartre — he easily moved from the role of a philosopher, to whom everything mundane is alien to whining and grumbling. At the same time, there were no reproaches in the couple about this, since everyone believed that everything depends on the mood.

It was not customary for them to limit each other in affairs on the side. Sartre and Beauvoir did not live under the same roof on purpose, but they saw each other every day. They liked to visit each other, sit in cafes and be in the company of friends, but none of them thought of encroaching on the freedom of the other.

This idyll lasted until Olga Kozakevich appeared in their lives — a young noblewoman from Russia, from a family of immigrants. She fell in love with both of them and gave herself to this passion to the end. In general, Olga used to do everything thoroughly, with full dedication — at parties a young woman could dance until she fainted.

The offer that Sartre made to Olga Kazakevich turned out to be unexpected for many. Kazakevich refused, as they appreciated the Sartre-Beauvoir couple precisely because of the free relationship. At this time, dangerous things began to happen in Europe, which soon destroyed the idyll of the Trinity.

The Nazis came to power in Germany, and in Italy has long been ruled by fascists. Soon the Second World War broke out and Sartre went to the front, where he was soon captured. During this period , Simone de Beauvoir wrote her first novel, The Guest, which many believe was a reflection of a woman's concern for the fate of her beloved.

An inexperienced reader will see in the novel only the story of a family drama, when a family friend breaks the hearth. But for the philosopher, this plot is a direct address to the humanistic existentialism that Beauvoir and Sartre preached for many years. This novel went to the table was not published, as was the collection of short stories that was written before that. Beauvoir realized that literature was not her field and gave up writing for a while.

But Sartre, returning from captivity, unlike Simone, was delighted with her literary experiments. He placed the "Guest" in a good publishing house and began to insist that Simone continue to write. This support from a loved one helped Beauvoir a lot — she turned from an ordinary philosophy teacher into a writer.

A little later, serious philosophical works devoted to female nature began to come out from her pen. Beauvoir's most famous books are a discussion on why women are driven into femininity, breaking their personalities and squeezing them into the rigid framework accepted by society.

The clear analysis of the issue made in this work produced a real explosion in French society. Prior to that, the issue was considered in general terms, in a variety of disparate articles, and for the first time an entire book was devoted to it, in which an extraordinary, but very coherent theory was present.

As she immersed herself in her work, Beauvoir gradually moved away from Sartre, although the man never left her heart. The writer and philosopher left France and went to the USA, where he got together with the actress Ehrenreich. Ten years later, a very young Algerian woman appeared in his life, whom Sartre had to adopt in order to be able to be with her and not cause condemnation.

There were changes in the life of Simone, who had previously seen a man only in Sartre, and she preferred to have intrigues only with women. Unable to bear the separation from Jean Paul, Beauvoir also moves overseas and there, unexpectedly, falls in love with a man.

Of course, this was an extraordinary person, because there were simply no other people in the life of a female philosopher. His name was Nelson Algren and he was a writer. After a short, but very stormy affair, Algren offered Simone three things: to move to Chicago with him, get married and have children.

Beauvoir rejected all three proposals, which did not prevent her from calling Nelson a "beloved husband" in her correspondence. Simone constantly upset her man with her unwillingness to be around, slipping away and mood swings. A woman could suddenly go to the other side of the world and write tender letters from there.

Algren, like any real man, would prefer tender hugs to such a correspondence novel, but he endured and gently kept 300 letters from Simone all his life. This amazing romance lasted for 14 years. During this period Beauvoir wrote the novels "The Second Sex" and "Tangerines".

If because of the "Second Sex", which confused the most zealous freethinkers, many acquaintances turned away from Simone, then "Tangerines" negatively affected the writer's relationship with Nelson Algren. The man decided that in the novel Beauvoir had exposed their relationship to the readers without even asking his permission, and was seriously offended.

At this time, the third important man in Beauvoir's life appears in her life — 27-year-old journalist Claude Lanzman. The man was 17 years younger than Simone and they worked for the same newspaper. Claude proposed to the woman to start living together and she, to the surprise of everyone who knew her, agreed for the first time in her life. This was followed by seven years of life, which could be called happy.

But in 1958 Beauvoir broke up with Lanzman, and in 1961 — with Algren. From that moment on, Jean Paul Sartre remained in her heart, as always, with whom Simone felt connected, even being in different hemispheres. Sartre and Beauvoir spent a lot of time together, and in the 60s even visited the Soviet Union. Many believe that this visit, organized by the Writers' Union, had a beneficial effect on the relationship.

In 1970, Sartre became seriously ill and health problems did not leave him. Simone Beauvoir took care of her beloved for ten years, once again proving that he is the love of his life. Sartre's death put an end to the woman's life — she could not fully live and work without her inspirer. Simone died six years after her main love left this world.

Unfortunately, today feminism is increasingly losing its ideological component, laid down by Simone Beauvoir and acquires strange and even funny forms.