Beauvoir blamed bourgeois moral hypocrisy for her best friend’s death.

Evidence

Only later did Beauvoir learn why. Elisabeth’s mother, thinking Merleau-Ponty unsuitable for her daughter, had warned him to back off or else she would reveal an alleged secret about his mother: that she had been unfaithful, and that at least one of her children was not her husband’s. To prevent a scandal engulfing both his mother and his sister, who was about to get married, Merleau-Ponty bowed out. … Beauvoir was even more disgusted after she learned the truth. How typical of the filthy bourgeoisie! Elisabeth’s mother had shown a classic middle-class combination of moralism, cruelty and cowardice. Moreover, Beauvoir considered that the result literally proved lethal. Elisabeth had been very upset, and in the middle of the emotional crisis she caught a serious illness, probably encephalitis. She died of it, aged just twenty-one. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 372

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Beauvoir’s later ethics in The Second Sex and her lifelong campaign against bourgeois values; also anticipates the existentialist theme of bad faith in social roles.