Simone de Beauvoir, stream of consciousness and philosophical fiction: Becoming a self in the first draft of She Came to Stay
Christine Battersby
Literature Compass June 1, 2020 DOI: 10.1111/lic3.12553 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Historical analysis Peer reviewed |
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| Key points | Argues that the deleted 1938 opening chapters of Beauvoir's first novel draw on Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, rather than Hegel or Sartre, to portray the developing female self, and compares her strategies with those of May Sinclair's Mary Olivier. The article also examines Beauvoir's teenage diaries and her reasons for abandoning stream of consciousness narrative techniques. |
Abstract
Abstract: This article locates Simone de Beauvoir in the stream of consciousness, metaphysical novel, and Bildungsroman writing traditions. Its focus is the two opening chapters from the 1938 draft of Beauvoir's first novel, She Came to Stay —first published in French in 1943 as L’Invitée —and deleted at the insistence of her publishers. Although Beauvoir's own philosophical fictions are, in general, linked to Hegel's phenomenology and to Sartre's existentialism, in the discarded text, it is Schopenhauer and Nietzsche who are key to Beauvoir's account of the developing female self. Beauvoir's narrative and philosophical strategies are compared to those adopted by May Sinclair in Mary Olivier (1919). The influence of other stream of consciousness novelists is also registered. Beauvoir's recently published teenage diaries, which record a “passion” for Schopenhauer, are discussed, together with his mysticism and his misogyny. The article ends by considering Beauvoir's reasons for abandoning stream of consciousness narrative techniques.