Simone de Beauvoir

Bianca Bienenfeld, later Bianca Lamblin, born in 1921, was Simone de Beauvoir's pupil in 1937–1938. In memoirs published in 1993, she described a relationship that quickly became romantic with her teacher, followed by her introduction to Sartre and a triangular relationship she subsequently experienced as seduction and abandonment. Publication of Beauvoir's diaries and letters in the early 1990s had revealed Bianca's identity and prompted her autobiographical response.

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Beauvoir signed the statement 'À propos d'un procès', published shortly before the trial of three men charged with sexual acts involving children under fifteen. The statement criticised more than three years of pre-trial detention and considered the criminal classification disproportionate in light of the law and social attitudes cited by the petitioners.

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Directly implicated

Role of the person profiled

Protagonist not prosecuted

Beauvoir signed an appeal by eighty public figures seeking to relax and modernise criminal provisions governing certain relationships between adults and minors, including rules concerning children under fifteen and homosexual relationships involving minors aged fifteen to eighteen. The statement explicitly questioned the age at which an adolescent could be considered capable of freely consenting.

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Beauvoir played a central role in preparing the Manifesto of the 343, published on 5 April 1971, mobilising her contacts and helping Gisèle Halimi finalise the text. Signatories declared that they had undergone abortions while abortion was illegal, openly engaging in civil disobedience to bring about legislative change.

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Directly implicated

Beauvoir published an appeal in Le Monde detailing allegations of torture and sexual violence made by Djamila Boupacha after her arrest. The article helped internationalise the case. That edition of Le Monde was seized in Algiers, and the government issued a statement disputing elements of its presentation and recalling that an investigation was under way.

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Personally implicated

Beauvoir signed the Manifesto of the 121, which recognised the right to refuse military service and assist Algerians during the war. A judicial investigation was opened after its publication, and Beauvoir, like Sartre, was questioned by the criminal investigation police in November 1960.

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After a six-week visit to the People's Republic of China in 1955, Beauvoir published La Longue Marche in 1957. Her account acknowledged some limitations of the regime but viewed communist China broadly with sympathy and confidence in its future. Critics described it as illustrating Western intellectuals' difficulty in fully recognising coercion and the blind spots of an organised visit.

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In 'Faut-il brûler Sade ?', Beauvoir treats Sade as a major philosophical interlocutor and emphasises his moral significance. This interpretation long troubled some feminist theorists, who saw tension with her ethics of reciprocity and The Second Sex. Recent scholarship re-examines that tension rather than reducing the essay to simple endorsement.

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Directly implicated