Friday, January 04, 2008

Beauvoir's centenary

Simone de Beauvoir, one of my role models as a young woman, was born in January 1908 and died in 1986.

A contradictory figure in some ways - wanting equality for women, independence in work and private life, and yet always under Sartre's shadow, although she argued that she was not. Would she have been considered even more outrageous now, as she and J-P S exploited their roles as university and sixth form teachers to indulge in sexual relationships with students?

Is this any more important in the long-term than Racine's ill-treatment of his wife?

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