SOURCE: Fallaize, Elizabeth. Review of Simone de Beauvoir, by Toril Moi. French Studies 50, no. 2 (April 1996): 230-31.

In the following review, Fallaize comments on the historical significance of Simone de Beauvoir in terms of its subject and its analysis.

This eagerly-awaited book [Simone de Beauvoir] comes as a beacon in Beauvoir studies, presenting a forceful case for Beauvoir as the greatest feminist theorist of our century whilst simultaneously identifying in her intellectual and emotional trajectory a series of emblematic dilemmas which patriarchy continues to pose to intellectual women today. Thus in an illuminating investigation of the making of Simone de Beauvoir, Moi shows how Beauvoir's speaking position was constrained by the educational capital it was open to her to amass, and demonstrates why Beauvoir needed her fantasy of unity with Sartre. The question which Angela Carter asked—why ‘a nice girl like Simone wasted her time sucking up to...