SOURCE: "Quand prime le spirituel," in Simone de Beauvoir: A Study of Her Writings, Harrap, 1983, pp. 140-60.

In the following excerpt, Keefe studies characterization in Beauvoir's stories.

On a number of occasions in the early nineteen-thirties Beauvoir began writing novels, but she abandoned each of her attempts before producing anything that she might submit to a publisher. In 1935, however, she embarked upon a series of five interlinked stories, the unifying theme of which was 'la profusion de crimes, minuscules ou énormes, que couvrent les mystifications spiritualistes' (FA, 256). The collection was ironically entitled La Primauté du spirituel. She herself was in revolt against the spiritualism that had oppressed her for so long and wished to express her disgust 'à travers l'histoire de jeunes femmes que je connaissais et qui en avaient été les victimes plus ou moins consentantes' (QPS, vii). Beauvoir completed the work in 1937, but by the time...