La Femme rompue de Simone de Beauvoir :

Réécriture ou dépassement de Princesses de science de Colette Yver ?

Abstract

During her childhood, Simone de Beauvoir had been influenced by her father’s vision of women, and
particularly by his definition of women’s devotion, which came from the books he had read on this topic.. It was
not from a feminist point of view, but from a patriarchal one. Beauvoir’s father suggested to his daughters,
according to Simone de Beauvoir’ Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, the example of Colette Yver‘s heroines, who,
according Beauvoir’s recollections in her autobiography, preferred the marital home to what she saw as arid
intellectuality. Fortunately, neither Simone nor Hélène de Beauvoir did follow or adopt this internalised
paternalist way. However, Simone de Beauvoir made the best use of Colette Yver’s books, writing a short story –
when she was already more than middle-aged – “The Broken Woman” which can be reminiscent of Colette Yver
‘s “Princesses of Science”. We would like to show how Simone de Beauvoir deconstructed Yver’s novel in order
to serve her own feminist agenda at the time : how to offer freedom to women instead of the illusory marital
comfort and “bliss”, even though such an option – a way out – could seem arduous and much harder to achieve