Beauvoir found authentic heterosexual reciprocity modeled in Malraux’s fiction

Evidence

“What makes the attitude of Kyo human and moving,” claims Beauvoir, “is that it implies reciprocity and that he asks May to love him as he is, not to send back a fawning refl ection” (SS, 185; DS I, 302). For Beauvoir, Malraux’s account gives us an all-too-rare glimpse of the possibility of an authentic reciprocal relationship between a man and woman— one based on mutual understanding, trust, and respect. — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 279

Categorization

• XREF: Ties Beauvoir’s literary sources to her philosophical opposition to Sartre, and the Kyo-May reciprocity parallels Françoise-Pierre in She Came to Stay.