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PART I SAN REVIEW
A METROPOLITAN GIRLHOOD
MEMOIRS OF A DUTIFUL DA UG HTER. By Simone de Beauvoi r. Tran s–
lated by James Kirkup . W orld Publishing Com pany. $5.
Mlle. de Beauvoir is writing one of the recognized types of
autobiography-the case-book story of a development. This kind of
reminiscence, unlike the hold-all volume of memoirs, needs to be written
very austerely. Nothing must go in that does not directly bear on the
theme, and there can only be one theme: the growth of the writer's
inner mind. This, in fact, is almost the only kind of writing in which
it is an offence to bring in material for no better reason than that it
is likely to interest the reader. No episode, however picturesque, no
meeting, with however famous a personage, no adventure, however
heroic, has a place in the book unless it can be shown to have been forma–
tive. And, as we all know, the formative things in our lives are never
the ones that make the best material. The decisive things in everyone's
childhood and adolescence are always much the same, and it is never
possible to make them interesting to anyone else. Wordsworth, being a
great poet, manages to interest us in an account of how he rowed on–
to a lake in an unlawfully borrowed boat, had a fit of the shudders
when he thought a mountain peak was looking at him accusingly, and
hastily rowed back to shore. Everyone's childhood contains such inci–
dents, but not everyone can relate them in such a way that his hearers
retain consciousness. Still, the risk of being a bore is one that must be
taken, or this kind of autobiography cannot be written. The unspoken
challenge to the reader must be,
"If
you want to know about
me,
read this: if not, leave it alone."
The frequent boredom I felt, therefore, at the triviality of most
of Mlle. de Beauvoir's narrative cannot be brought forward as a legi–
timate critical charge against the book. Little Simone grew up in one
of those shut-in, asphyxiating French interiors that have been described
so many times.
It
was the characteristic large French family whose mem–
bers keep in constant touch with one another, making rounds of visits,
never overlooking a birthday or festival, and staying in one another's
country and town houses. Simone's parents were at first solidly estab–
lished, with good prospects; but, after the war, "bad times" descended,
social ambitions were abandoned, and the two daughters were set to
learn secure trades. Simone's cleverness at her books, which originally
delighted her father, suddenly made her distasteful to him. The reason,
in retrospect, is plain enough; as long as the family fortun es were sound
