{"id":1904,"date":"2017-03-05T15:45:03","date_gmt":"2017-03-05T15:45:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/clc.sllf.qmul.ac.uk\/?p=1904"},"modified":"2023-11-17T10:19:16","modified_gmt":"2023-11-17T10:19:16","slug":"woman-destroyed-by-simone-de-beauvoir","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/clc.sllf.qmul.ac.uk\/?p=1904","title":{"rendered":"‘The Monologue’ from Woman Destroyed by Simone de Beauvoir (1967)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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It\u2019s quietened down a bit up there. Footsteps voices in the staircase car-doors slamming there\u2019s still their bloody fool dance-music but they aren\u2019t dancing any more. I know what they\u2019re at. This is the moment they make love on beds on sofas on the ground in cars the time for being sick sick sick when they bring up the turkey and the caviar it\u2019s filthy I have a feeling there\u2019s a smell of vomit I\u2019m going to burn a joss-stick. If only I could sleep I\u2019m wide awake dawn is far away still this is a ghastly hour of the night and Sylvie died without understanding me I\u2019ll never get over it. This smell of incense is the same as at the funeral service: the candles the flowers the catafalque.<\/p>\n

My despair. Dead: it was impossible! For hours and hours I sat there by her body thinking no of course she\u2019ll wake up I\u2019ll wake up. All that effort all those struggles scenes sacrifices\u2014all in vain. My life\u2019s work gone up in smoke. I left nothing to chance; and chance at its cruellest reached out and hit me. Sylvie is dead. Five years already. She is dead. For ever. I can\u2019t bear it. Help it hurts too much get me out of here I can\u2019t bear the breakdown to start again no help me I can\u2019t bear the breakdown to start again no help me I can\u2019t bear it any longer don\u2019t leave me alone . . .<\/p>\n

Who to ring? Albert Bernard would hang up like a flash: he blubbered in front of everybody tonight but he\u2019s gorged and had fun and I\u2019m the one that remembers and weeps. My mother: after all a mother is a mother I never did her any harm she was the one who mucked up my childhood she insulted me she presumed to tell me . . . I want her to take back what she said I won\u2019t go on living with those words in my ears a daughter can\u2019t bear being cursed by her mother even if she\u2019s the ultimate word in tarts.<\/p>\n

\u2018Was it you who rang me?\u2019. . . It surprised me too but after all on a night like this it could happen you might think of my grief and say to yourself that a mother and a daughter can\u2019t be on bad terms all their lives long; above all since I really can\u2019t see what you can possibly blame me for . . . Don\u2019t shout like that . . .\u2019<\/p>\n

She has hung up. She wants peace. She poisons my life the bitch I\u2019ll have to settle her hash. What hatred! She\u2019s always hated me: she killed two birds with one stone in marrying me to Albert. She made sure of her fun and my unhappiness. I didn\u2019t want to admit it I\u2019m too clean too pure but it\u2019s staringly obvious. It was she who hooked him at the physical culture class and she treated herself to him slut that she was it can\u2019t have been very inviting to stuff her but what with all the men who\u2019d been there before she must have known a whole bagful of tricks like getting astride over the guy I can just imagine it it\u2019s perfectly revolting the way respectable women make love. […] How old was she when she stopped? Maybe she treats herself to gigolos she\u2019s not so poor as she says she\u2019s no doubt kept jewels that she sold off in the sly. I think that after you\u2019re fifty you ought to have the decency to give it up: I gave it up well before ever since I went into mourning. It doesn\u2019t interest me any more I\u2019m blocked I never think of those things any more even in dreams.<\/p>\n

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This extract from \u2018The Monologue\u2019 is the quintessential illustration of self-imprisonment through the French phenomenon, mauvaise foi. Throughout the narrative, De Beauvoir uses a stream of consciousness narrative which lacks in punctuation and illustrates the chaotic mind of the main character. Hate has been accumulating in the protagonist’s life and begins to form a barrier, preventing the escape from her past. As she is blinded by grief and envy, she fails to exploit her own freedom, and implies that she still relies on her ex husband for emotional support but he would \u2018hang up like a flash\u2019. This suggests that her life lacks healthy relationships, and she depends on those who are not interested in her happiness. <\/p>\n

\tThe language used conforms to a semantic field of illness. Words such as \u2018filthy\u2019, the repetition of \u2018sick sick sick\u2019 and \u2018poisons\u2019 all suggest that the protagonist is feeling as though the world is against her. However, she is shackled by the death of her daughter, as a simple act of burning incense to remove the \u2018smell of vomit\u2019 sweeps her back to day of Sylvie\u2019s funeral. This mental constraint imprisons the protagonist to the confines of her apartment, creating a metaphorical prison where she loathes in disgust at society.<\/p>\n

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Rebecca Hind<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Taken from the Woman Destroyed collection, ‘The Monologue’ depicts a spoilt, middle-aged woman who succumbs to mauvaise-foi and would rather bitch about others.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":2116,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,21,22,27,28,29,30,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-2016-2017","category-2017-2018","category-2018-2019","category-2020-2021","category-2021-2022","category-2022-2023","category-2023-2024","category-imprisonment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clc.sllf.qmul.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/clc.sllf.qmul.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/clc.sllf.qmul.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clc.sllf.qmul.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clc.sllf.qmul.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1904"}],"version-history":[{"count":77,"href":"https:\/\/clc.sllf.qmul.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1904\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1907,"href":"https:\/\/clc.sllf.qmul.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1904\/revisions\/1907"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clc.sllf.qmul.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clc.sllf.qmul.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clc.sllf.qmul.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clc.sllf.qmul.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}