Simone de Beauvoir writes that a girl is a “human being before becoming a woman,” and she “knows already that to accept herself as a woman is to become resigned and to mutilate herself.” This is part of the reason these childhood characters are all so independent, so eager to make the most of whatever presents itself: they—or, more to the point, their creators—understand that adulthood is always looming, which means marriage and children, which means, in effect, the end.
