She Came to Stay

Rating:
Summary: A Proud Emotional Creature
Review: Francoise and Pierre Labrousse are a couple. Xaviere is a student from Rouen. Xaviere's real life has yet to begin. Pierre suggests that perhaps he and Francoise can help Xaviere manage to live in Paris.

When Xaviere comes to live in the same hotel as Francoise, she spends much of her time alone in her room. After the rehearsal of Pierre's play, Pierre and Francoise go to a bar by habit. When Pierre becomes interested in a person he is able to carry on a conversation for hours with angelic ferocity. This is part of his generosity. Francoise persuades Xaviere to accompany her to the bar.

An example of Xaviere's thinking is Xaviere holds that concerts are a ridiculous convention since it is silly to arrange to hear music at a certain time. Pierre speaks of his confounded mania for making a conquest. While Pierre is acting Francoise is able to work on her novel. After Xaviere moves to Paris Francoise finds that she has little free time.

At a party Francoise and Pierre's sister Elisabeth view the actresses as having an embalmed youth to their appearances. Francoise believes that the life of Pierre and hers that is perfect as to form is beginning to lose its substance. She becomes ill and has to move to a nursing home for care. The night of the New Year's Eve party Pierre had offered to give up Xaviere and now it seems to Francoise that Xaviere and Pierre are in love.

When Francoise and Pierre are in the presence of Xaviere she becomes upset because she, Xaviere, feels her feelings are being dissected. Since Pierre and Francoise are supposed to have a perfect love, she, Francoise, becomes annoyed when Pierre and Xaviere bring their love to her attention. Francoise endeavors to focus on everyone as part of a trio. Elisabeth thinks that Xaviere is a sly fickle girl. Francoise comes to the realization that watching Xaviere so closely is squalid.

Both Pierre and Francoise seek to influence Xaviere and she suffers from their attention. In the end Francoise chooses to be alone, Pierre is in the service, (it is 1940 or so and the war is going on), and Xaviere is estranged. (Alternatively Francoise and Xaviere end up dead.)

This is the novel, I have read, in which the author worked out her ideas about freedom, existentialism, and in turn transmitted them to Jean Paul Sartre for philosophical exposition. I have also read that situations such as the one described here gave rise to ethical complaints from parents causing De Beauvoir to lose her license to teach. The book has always been too schematic for my tastes as fiction qua fiction, but one cannot help being intrigued by the historical notoriety of the book.

Rating:
Summary: Existential relationships are never easy.
Review: Relationships are never easy, even for intellectuals like Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre. Set in pre-World War II Paris, de Beauvoir's first novel, SHE CAME TO STAY (1954) provides a fictional portrait of her unconventional relationship with her lifelong partner, Sartre, and her protege, Bianca Bienenfeld. Their menage a trois began in 1938, when de Beauvoir introduced Bienenfeld (aka Bianca Lamblin) to her partner/lover, Sartre, who was thirty-three, and ended in 1940 when, at de Beauvoir's encouragement, Sartre abandoned Lamblin on the eve of WWII. Although SHE CAME TO STAY may be read as a love story examining the complex dilemmas posed by love (demonstrating existential relationships are perhaps easier in theory than in reality) and the destructive powers of relationships, it also succeeds on a more philosphical level.

SHE CAME TO STAY tells the story of Francoise, her lover, Pierre, and Xaviere, an emotionally unstable young woman from Rouen who comes between them. The novel demonstrates that a relationship can lead not only to ecstasy, but also to a personal, life-changing crisis. The romantic threesome de Beauvoir creates for Francoise sears her protagonist "like a sharp burn" (p. 207). Francoise becomes angry, insanely jealous, and then disillusioned with her dream of "one life, one work, one love" (p. 233) with Pierre. Eventually, her relationship leads her to experience life without meaning: an existential "abyss of nothingness" (p. 291). "It was like death," de Beauvior writes, "a total negation, an eternal absence . . . the entire universe was was engulfed in it, and Francoise, forever excluded from the world, was herself dissolved in this void" (p. 291). By the end of the novel, Xaviere is destroyed by an act of revenge, and Francoise is alone and estranged from Pierre.

While SHE CAME TO STAY may not measure up to the writing standards de Beauvoir later set with THE MANDARINS and THE SECOND SEX, it is nevertheless a powerful novel. Readers interested in reading more about de Beauvoir's real-life triangle with Sartre and Lamblin may consider reading Lamblin's memoir, A DISGRACEFUL AFFAIR, in which Lamblin offers her first-hand account of her unconventional relationship with the two French existentialists.


G. Merritt

Rating:
Summary: A riveting study of jealousy
Review: This is Simone's first published novel and writing this book removed her own writer's block and enabled her to go on to win the Prix Goncourt and, of course, write "The Second Sex." While it is hardly "feminist," after all, the main woman character has an intellectually intimate but apparently sexless relationship with a man who rules her life, it is a woman's book. How many women, involved in a triangle, have wanted to eliminate their rival? While Simone left her real life rival unharmed, her alter ego Francoise murders her rival. Based on the trio well-known to readers of Simone's memoirs, this is a flawed but still enjoyable work. First of all, it is a little too quotidian. We know that Simone was a work-a-holic who parceled out her day into writing and confering with J-P, but that sort of lifestyle is too accurately portrayed in this novel. Second, there seems to be a basic flaw in the "plot," that arises from the basic situation of the Sartre-de Beauvoir shared life and that is while both Francoise and Pierre can excuse their own sexual explorations, when their protege Xaviere exercises her own FREEDOM OF CHOICE (remember that slogan from the 60s? Not to choose is to choose? That was Sartre.), her elders discipline her. Why does Simone, a woman with impeccable philosophical credentials, contradict her own ontology? At the same time, this book accurately portrays some very real human emotions.

Rating:
Summary: A riveting study of jealousy
Review: This is Simone's first published novel and writing this book removed her own writer's block and enabled her to go on to win the Prix Goncourt and, of course, write "The Second Sex." While it is hardly "feminist," after all, the main woman character has an intellectually intimate but apparently sexless relationship with a man who rules her life, it is a woman's book. How many women, involved in a triangle, have wanted to eliminate their rival? While Simone left her real life rival unharmed, her alter ego Francoise murders her rival. Based on the trio well-known to readers of Simone's memoirs, this is a flawed but still enjoyable work. First of all, it is a little too quotidian. We know that Simone was a work-a-holic who parceled out her day into writing and confering with J-P, but that sort of lifestyle is too accurately portrayed in this novel. Second, there seems to be a basic flaw in the "plot," that arises from the basic situation of the Sartre-de Beauvoir shared life and that is while both Francoise and Pierre can excuse their own sexual explorations, when their protege Xaviere exercises her own FREEDOM OF CHOICE (remember that slogan from the 60s? Not to choose is to choose? That was Sartre.), her elders discipline her. Why does Simone, a woman with impeccable philosophical credentials, contradict her own ontology? At the same time, this book accurately portrays some very real human emotions.

Rating:
Summary: a serious study of emotion and reason
Review: While _The Mandarins_ is her most popular novel, _She Came to Stay_ offers another powerful writing of Simone De Beauvoir. She draws a delicate sketch of relationship between three characters of Francoise, Pierre and Xaviere, and reveals the complicated role of "reason" and "emotion" of an individual in his/her relations with other individuals. The story unfolds as supposedly ideal relationship between Francoise and Pierre based on "reason" is interfered by Xaviere, whose expressive nature both enchants and threatens them. They attempt an ambitious idea of building a "trio" in love, but all three end up experiencing emotional pains and intellectual confusions. It appears in a most dramatic way for Francoise, whose well-controlled jealousy and hatred throughout the book burst out as killing Xaviere in the end. Part I reads rather slow with a little too much details on Francoise's hidden emotions and thoughts and indirect descriptions of the psychological status of two other characters, but in Part II everything tightens up as the story focuses on Francoise's thoughts and actions. This is an impressive piece that makes a serious study of emotion and reason by almost "purely" focusing on human relations.