Beauvoir repurposed Dos Passos’s technique into satirical social critique of the Catholic bourgeoisie

Evidence

But if Sartre fi nds Dos Passos’s universe nightmarish and his characters bereft of a future, Beauvoir uses his technique— as well as those of others— to describe colorfully, satirically, and parodically the stultifying, oppressive, and hypocritical atmosphere of the French Catholic petty bourgeoisie of the 1920s and 30s. Unstintingly, she lays bare its repressive puritanism, its fear of sexuality, and its sanctimonious mores; and in the last story, she proudly rejects this paralyzing and debilitating universe and proclaims her independence and eagerness to discover reality in all its newness and variety. As our summaries and citations will illustrate, Beauvoir’s excellent memory for detail, the telling adjectives, and the deliberately cloying phraseology show that she possessed a fi ne understanding of her milieu and, as a social critic, knew how to unmask the inner selves and to uncover the basic raw impulses of her characters. — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 550

Categorization

• XREF: Speaks directly to the Beauvoir–Sartre influence debate: she adopted his modernist technique but for a distinct satirical-sociological purpose.
• ADDENDUM: The unmasking of ‘sanctimonious mores’ and puritanism in the Catholic petite bourgeoisie parallels the moral-panic dynamics in ‘Complaints About Immodesty Go Way Back’.