This is the first full-length study to explore Simone de Beauvoir's autobiographical and biographical writings in the context of ideas on selfhood formulated in Le deuxiËme sexe and her other philosophical essays of the 1940s. Drawing on recent w...

Simone de Beauvoir's groundbreaking work has transformed the way we think about gender and identity. Without her 1949 text "The Second Sex," gender theory as we know it today would be unthinkable. A leading figure in French existentialism, Beauvoi...