SOURCE: "Intimacy," in Yale French Studies, Vol. 1, No. 1, Spring-Summer, 1948, pp. 73-9.

In the following essay about Sartre's short story "Intimacy, " Morris examines the character Lulu, noting that in "Existentialist terms, Lulu refuses her choice; she remains 'astride' of a paradox in Baudelairian fashion. " Morris concludes by asserting that "Existentialism is for heroes."

The opening section¹ of Sartre's "Intimité" is the richest of all in the dramatic, esthetic, and metaphysical ironies which lie at the center of the story and the situation it describes. It reminds us inevitably of the closing episode of Joyce's Ulysses, where Molly Bloom, "in the attitude of Gea-Tellus, fulfilled, recumbent, big with seed," at rest in her bed, approximating the lotus-dream of the Great Sleeper Haveth Childers Everywhere, lets flow forth the vital rhythms of the feminine principle. As Joyce's last becomes Sartre's first, the Earth Mother-soprano is metamorphosed into a barren little flirt...