The Woman Destroyed

The Woman Destroyed
Simone de Beauvoir

First published in 1967, this book consists of three short novellas on the theme of women's vulnerability – in the first, to the process of ageing, in the second to loneliness, and, in the third, to the growing indifference of a loved one.THE WOMAN DESTROYED is a collection of three stories, each an exquisite and passionate study of a woman trapped by circumstances, trying to rebuild her life.In the first story, ‘The Age of Discretion’, a successful scholar fast approaching middle age faces a double shock – her son’s abandonment of the career she has chosen for him and the harsh critical rejection of her latest academic work. ‘The Monologue’ is an extraordinary New Year’s Eve outpouring of invective from a woman consumed with bitterness and loneliness after her son and her husband have left home. Finally, in ‘The Woman Destroyed’, Simone de Beauvoir tells the story of Monique, trying desperately to resurrect her life after her husband confesses to an affair with a younger woman.Compassionate, lucid, full of wit and knowing, Simone de Beauvoir’s rare insight into the inequalities and complexities of women’s lives is unsurpassable.

SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR

The Woman Destroyed

Translated by Patrick O’Brian

Copyright (#ulink_abe8d300-17f0-5ec8-b66f-1d3ee98bf756)

Fourth Estate

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

http://www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)

This edition published by Harper Perennial 2006

Previously published in paperback by Flamingo 1994 (as a Flamingo Modern Classic) and 1984, and by Fontana 1971

First published in Great Britain by Collins 1969

First published in France by Editions Gallimard under the title La Femme Rompue 1967

Copyright © in the French edition, Editions Gallimard 1967

Copyright © in the English translation, William Collins Sons & Co Ltd,

London and Glasgow, and G.P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, 1969

PS Section copyright © Louise Tucker 2006

PS

is a trademark of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Contents

Title Page (#ucaefd52e-c110-5e93-b8ae-c70b87cd5469)

Copyright (#uf29203c2-9ade-565a-8b50-0caa5cc9885c)

The Age of Discretion (#ub0f11a50-c45b-5f5e-b992-209caef65557)

The Monologue (#litres_trial_promo)

The Woman Destroyed (#litres_trial_promo)

P.S. Ideas, Interviews & Features… (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

‘The Art of Fiction’ 35, The Paris Review, 1965 (#litres_trial_promo)

Life at a Glance (#litres_trial_promo)

Read On (#litres_trial_promo)

Have You Read?

If You Loved this, You Might Like … (#litres_trial_promo)

Find Out More (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

By the Same Author (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

THE AGE OF DISCRETION (#ulink_d7dfafef-09e3-5f91-b8d5-50534dbdf196)

Has my watch stopped? No. But its hands do not seem to be going round. Don’t look at them. Think of something else—anything else: think of yesterday, a calm, ordinary, easy-flowing day, in spite of the nervous tension of waiting.

Tender awakening. André was in an odd, curled-up position in bed, with the bandage over his eyes and one hand pressed against the wall like a child’s, as though in the confusion and distress of sleep he had needed to reach out to test the firmness of the world. I sat on the edge of his bed; I put my hand on his shoulder.

‘Eight o’clock.’

I carried the breakfast-tray into the library: I took up a book that had arrived the day before—I had already half leafed through it. What a bore, all this going on about non-communication. If you really want to communicate you manage, somehow or other. Not with everybody, of course, but with two or three people. Sometimes I don’t tell André about my moods, sorrows, unimportant anxieties; and no doubt he has his little secrets too; but on the whole there is nothing we do not know about one another. I poured out the China tea, piping hot and very strong. We drank it as we looked through our post: the July sun came flooding into the room. How many times had we sat there opposite one another at that little table with piping hot, very strong cups of tea in front of us? And we should do so again tomorrow, and in a year’s time, and in ten years’ time … That moment possessed the sweet gentleness of a memory and the gaiety of a promise. Were we thirty, or were we sixty?

André’s hair had gone white when he was young: in earlier days that snowy hair, emphasizing the clear freshness of his complexion, looked particularly dashing. It looks dashing still. His skin has hardened and wrinkled—old leather—but the smile on his mouth and in his eyes has kept its brilliance. Whatever the photograph-album may say to the contrary, the pictures of the young André conform to his present-day face: my eyes attribute no age to him. A long life filled with laughter, tears, quarrels, embraces, confessions, silences, and sudden impulses of the heart: and yet sometimes it seems that time has not moved by at all. The future still stretches out to infinity.

He stood up. ‘I hope your work goes well,’ he said.

‘Yours too,’ I replied.