Anne’s hope collapses as Pascal offers pity instead of reciprocal desire

Evidence

Anne comes back to Paris to see Pascal, but Chantal neglects her in favor of Paul Baron, to whom she wants “to become indispensable” (W, 143; A, 243). One evening Anne knocks: “A week from today, I leave for England, mama made all the arrangements without telling me.” She hopes to meet Pascal at Anne’s place and fi nally receives a call from his sister Marguerite: “Pascal can’t come.” Anne exclaims: “I fl ung myself on him with all my weight … but now it is only pity he feels for me.” — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 561

Categorization

• XREF: The pity-versus-love dilemma resonates with the reader’s library: the lover’s demand for reciprocity appears in A Very Minor Prophet and in the moral-psychology strand of this Beauvoir work. — connects to: Sadism originates in desire’s failure to sustain reciprocal incarnation

Broader Connections

• Sadism originates in desire’s failure to sustain reciprocal incarnation #exemplifies (0.78)