Anne’s self-harm reads as a bid for solitude, not an attempted suicide

Evidence

Anne reveals: “It’s over, fi nished. [She] has made her sacrifi ce” and is “at peace” (W, 137; A, 237). She also admits: “Once I needed to be so alone that I cut my foot with an axe, I spent ten days on a couch and during that period they left me in peace” (W, 140; A, 237–38). Chantal plays the existentialist: “Your resignation is in fact a defi nite choice: you chose peace.” But Anne begs her: “Don’t torment me… . I can’t take it anymore” (W, 140; A, 238–39). — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 561

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Beauvoir studies on how ‘The Woman Destroyed’ and the story ‘The Age of Discretion’ present female self-harm and sacrifice as distorted agency — and to debates over whether Simone de Beauvoir’s fiction prefigures her philosophy of situated freedom.