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Simone De Beauvoir, A Life of Freedom
In this, the first major study of Simone de Beauvoir, Carol Ascher traces the course of de Beauvoir's personal and intellectual achievements as well as her deep, lasting relationships with Sartre and others. Unlike many conventional biographers who approach their subjects with impersonal detachment, Ascher actively explores how de Beauvoir's political and philosophical ideas have influenced much of contemporary thought. She moves with deftness through the various layers of de Beauvoir's words and acts to uncover the woman behind the public and literary figure. Readers who have come away from de Beauvoir's memoirs with a gnawing sense that the whole story remains to be told will turn to this book. The woman portrayed here is a courageous, energetic one, full of contradictions and ambiguities, but always daring in her thinking. Thanks to Ascher's brave and innovative approach, this Simone de Beauvoir is strikingly real.
- GenresBiography
256 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 1981
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13 people want to read
About the author
Carol Ascher
42 books5 followersI was born in Cleveland three weeks after my parents arrived as refugees from the Nazi regimes of Central Europe. Our home was bilingual, with German the language of nostalgia, frightening memories, as well as intimacy.
I grew up in Topeka, Kansas, straddling two very different worlds: the Midwestern Christian world of my public school and neighborhood, and the community of Jewish refugees who, like my father, had been hired as psychoanalysts by the Menninger Foundation, one of the early psychoanalytic clinics in America.
My novel, The Flood, describes a ten-year-old whose biographical information is similar to mine, as she comes to understand the nature of prejudice. The novel takes place in Topeka in 1951, the year the Kansas River overflew, turning hundreds into refugees, and Reverend Oliver Brown sued the Topeka Board of Education, because his daughter had to travel across town to attend a segregated school.
I attended Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, for two years, and completed my BA at Barnard College. After taking off a few years to experience the life of a writer while taking a variety of jobs in New York City, I returned to Columbia, where I earned a doctorate in Anthropology and Education. I then spent several decades studying urban public schools, with most of my research directed at understanding issues of inequality and prejudice as they occur in public schools.
In the 1970s, sexual, reproductive and artistic issues in the Second Wave of feminism became the focus of my personal and public life. This led to two books, Simone deBeauvoir, a Life of Freedom, and a collection I edited with Sara Ruddick and Louise deSalvo, Between Women: Biographers, Novelists, Critics, Teachers and Artists Write about their Work on Women.
My refugee background has been a rich source on which I draw over and over in my writing. My memoir, Afterimages, focuses on how my parents' struggles to leave their homelands and make new lives for themselves in America, and describes my own journeys back to Germany and Austria to discover more about their pasts. This complicated background is also the xx of several personal essays, including The Dress, My Father's Violin, and, most recently, To Be Human in a Jewish Way, an essay about my aunt's experiences in the Jewish schools initiated by Martin Buber during the early years of the Nazi regime in Germany.
I grew up in Topeka, Kansas, straddling two very different worlds: the Midwestern Christian world of my public school and neighborhood, and the community of Jewish refugees who, like my father, had been hired as psychoanalysts by the Menninger Foundation, one of the early psychoanalytic clinics in America.
My novel, The Flood, describes a ten-year-old whose biographical information is similar to mine, as she comes to understand the nature of prejudice. The novel takes place in Topeka in 1951, the year the Kansas River overflew, turning hundreds into refugees, and Reverend Oliver Brown sued the Topeka Board of Education, because his daughter had to travel across town to attend a segregated school.
I attended Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, for two years, and completed my BA at Barnard College. After taking off a few years to experience the life of a writer while taking a variety of jobs in New York City, I returned to Columbia, where I earned a doctorate in Anthropology and Education. I then spent several decades studying urban public schools, with most of my research directed at understanding issues of inequality and prejudice as they occur in public schools.
In the 1970s, sexual, reproductive and artistic issues in the Second Wave of feminism became the focus of my personal and public life. This led to two books, Simone deBeauvoir, a Life of Freedom, and a collection I edited with Sara Ruddick and Louise deSalvo, Between Women: Biographers, Novelists, Critics, Teachers and Artists Write about their Work on Women.
My refugee background has been a rich source on which I draw over and over in my writing. My memoir, Afterimages, focuses on how my parents' struggles to leave their homelands and make new lives for themselves in America, and describes my own journeys back to Germany and Austria to discover more about their pasts. This complicated background is also the xx of several personal essays, including The Dress, My Father's Violin, and, most recently, To Be Human in a Jewish Way, an essay about my aunt's experiences in the Jewish schools initiated by Martin Buber during the early years of the Nazi regime in Germany.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
October 29, 2021
a good and digestible overview of beauvoir's biography and major themes in fiction and non.
a few criticisms: highly resentful letter in " clearing the air" is self indulgent and distracting to the subject. granted author does warn of its inclusion as well as of her intentions to write a work neither of literary or philosophy criticism nor of formal biography. if there is any benefit in reading this section it may be to witness the extent to which even an intellectual with encyclopedic knowledge of beauvoir's writing might still express regressive attitudes against a female intellectual via a need to individuate and place the writing dynamic within mother daughter context ("I discovered that writing a book about another person, perhaps especially if she is a woman, it's a kind of mothering."), even extending this cringeworthy diatribe into the realm of female competition for the attention of father/husband/male sexual partner with regard to Sartre. perhaps skip the section?
overall this is a very personal book- one which author likens to the child born of an affair with she and de Beauvoir
a few criticisms: highly resentful letter in " clearing the air" is self indulgent and distracting to the subject. granted author does warn of its inclusion as well as of her intentions to write a work neither of literary or philosophy criticism nor of formal biography. if there is any benefit in reading this section it may be to witness the extent to which even an intellectual with encyclopedic knowledge of beauvoir's writing might still express regressive attitudes against a female intellectual via a need to individuate and place the writing dynamic within mother daughter context ("I discovered that writing a book about another person, perhaps especially if she is a woman, it's a kind of mothering."), even extending this cringeworthy diatribe into the realm of female competition for the attention of father/husband/male sexual partner with regard to Sartre. perhaps skip the section?
overall this is a very personal book- one which author likens to the child born of an affair with she and de Beauvoir
January 13, 2024
I love the way this books blends the authors views with Simone's words, and it flows beautifully from one paragraph to the next.
Ascher opens up Simone's thoughts and relates them clearly and succinctly in a manner that makes Simone's words more poignant, and more necessary, especially today.
Ascher takes key ideas of Simone's life and writing and spells them out with easily readable text.
It's easy to tell that writing this book was a personal experience for Ascher. It's told with insight, understanding and illuminates Ascher as a writer and thinker at the same time she does with Simone's life and words.
This books shows how careful Simone's thinking was. It shows how it is OK to be unique, and stand alone no matter what others say. I'm glad I found this book.
Ascher opens up Simone's thoughts and relates them clearly and succinctly in a manner that makes Simone's words more poignant, and more necessary, especially today.
Ascher takes key ideas of Simone's life and writing and spells them out with easily readable text.
It's easy to tell that writing this book was a personal experience for Ascher. It's told with insight, understanding and illuminates Ascher as a writer and thinker at the same time she does with Simone's life and words.
This books shows how careful Simone's thinking was. It shows how it is OK to be unique, and stand alone no matter what others say. I'm glad I found this book.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews