Beauvoir’s positive passages on reciprocal love stem from her Algren liaison.

Evidence

But how did Beauvoir and Sartre reach the positive view of self-abandon to the other that they discuss in the Entretiens? Both Beauvoir’s and Sartre’s main texts suggesting a positive view of self-abandon to the other date from the same period, the second half of the 1940s, Th e Second Sex having been written from 1946 to 1949, and Notebooks for an Ethics during 1947 and 1948.13 Hidden here and there in the main text of Th e Second Sex, about women’s alienation in a patriarchal society, are a few positive strong passages about mutual self-abandon to the other and reciprocal love. Debra Bergoff en refers to these passages as portraying Beauvoir’s “muted voice,” which she opposes to Beauvoir’s “dominant voice” in Th e Second Sex. Th ey are obviously the result of an “expérience vécue” by Beauvoir herself, in her relationship to Nelson Algren, who abandoned himself to her and she to him during their passionate liaison of 1947–48. — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 136

Categorization

• XREF: Bergoffen’s ‘muted voice’ concept connects to broader feminist scholarship on Beauvoir’s ambivalence within The Second Sex, and to the historiographical debate on Beauvoir’s independent contributions to existentialism. — connects to: Both Beauvoir and Sartre derived their philosophical theories from lived love affairs — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 141
• SEED: The ‘muted voice vs. dominant voice’ framing offers an article angle on how lived experience infiltrates theoretical texts, and how critics code the same passages differently (compare Fuchs’s ‘mindlessness’ reading below).

Broader Connections

• Both Beauvoir and Sartre derived their philosophical theories from lived love affairs #responds-to (0.78) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 141