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A review by millennial_dandy
The Woman Destroyed by Simone de Beauvoir
3.0
3.5
Again, I find myself in the difficult position of trying to parse through the etiquette of rating a short story collection. I'm also walking on eggshells here because I know Simone de Beauvoir is so beloved outside of just the fiction she wrote, but that's not within my purview to get into, and plus, death of the author and all that.
Unlike some of the other short story collections I've rated, this one feels more cohesive and thoughtfully put-together. None of the three stories feels superfluous or tacked on. That being said, I didn't find the overall experience to be greater than the sum of its parts. And, frankly, some of it is simply down to my personal preferences when it comes to writing style.
The first story in the collection, Age of Discretion (a 5/5 for me), was the one I enjoyed most. It felt tight, it addressed some pretty hefty anxieties around aging, specifically. It also had the honor of not being depressing.
"The sight of the changing world is miraculous and heartbreaking, both at the same time.”
This summaries beautifully the thesis de Beauvoir seems to be driving at in the story. Our protagonist and her husband are both in or entering 'old age.' Initially, our protagonist is quite content. She's a professor working on yet another in a string of successful publications on literary criticism and at ease with the idea that much of her life in front of her will involve looking fondly backwards at the journey behind her.
Her husband, on the other hand, struggles with aging, even going so far as to assert that the first part of a scientist's career is about pushing the field forward, and the latter half of his career is him holding it back.
Our protagonist too is ultimately dragged into his feelings of worthlessness when her newest book, which she was so certain was groundbreaking, is panned as a simple rehash of ideas she's published before. Suddenly it is revealed that her lack of aging anxiety hinged on the notion that she was still, in some manner, 'useful' or 'productive.' Without that security blanket, she felt much the same as her husband, bitterly saying:
This, along with a general lack of clear communication with her husband and a rift with her son, leads her to fall into a spiraling depression she is only able to pull herself out of by directly facing what she perceives to be her failures.
She and her husband actually talk about her feelings of them growing apart, and she discovers that this was purely a miscommunication between them. He reveals as well his plans to take several physics courses to bring himself up-to-date even though he plans to retire. "Just to know it," he says. And he encourages her to pursue other intellectual interests, to expand her own knowledge base and find something new to be excited about.
In short, my takeaway, as a person in their late 20s, was that while aging may be characterized as de Beauvoir initially does, by saying: "sluggishness of the heart is called indulgence and wisdom: in fact it is death settling down within you." But it doesn't have to be this way; youth may lend itself to intellectual curiosity and flexibility, and perhaps, to some degree, to innovation, but as her husband points out, age only holds those things back to the degree that a person is unwilling to work out the muscles. If this weren't true, my 80 year-old grandfather wouldn't have been able to develop proficiency in smartphone technology.
Similarly, it prompted me, as an 'aging' young person, to push back against my own crochety attitude towards things like TikTok. I can go down that road, but de Beauvoir warns us that that kind of ageist superiority ultimately just bites us in the ass.
The second story, 'The Monologue,' I have admittedly less to say anything about. That kind of stream of consciousness writing is simply not something I enjoy reading even though I can fully appreciate that it can be done with purpose and good craftmanship. A reviewer for The Science Survey
summarized 'The Monologue' incredibly well, saying: 'The Monologue is, amongst a plethora of other, more sophisticated descriptive phrases, exhausting. [...] De Beauvoir did this by design. [...] She knows how agonizing it must be to endure the seemingly endless soliloquy [...] She claims space for herself, knowing that she deserves it."
This is all fine and true, and having read it I can see the feminist argument to be made for its existence, but I just don't like reading stream of consciousness, so I was never going to like this any more than I liked that aspect of Faulkner's 'The Sound and the Fury.'
The third and titular story, 'The Woman Destroyed' was, in a word, depressing, in almost every aspect. Written as an epistolary diary of our protagonist, this, more than even 'The Monologue,' was a slog. Getting through this story was exhausting. Not that it was dense in style or form; each diary entry was a pretty easy bite, but the sheer weight and repetitiveness of her anxiety that quickly slides into the realm of pure neuroticism, is painful.
This also felt the most like a feminist text. Not feminist in the academic sense, but more in the sense that this touches on something of the horror of womanhood within a patriarchal system, particularly a system in which that pressure is invisible. There are no laws that actively relegate women to second-class citizens, but there are nonetheless certain social expectations baked into the ways in which such a society socializes girls to behave and think.
Our protagonist discovers her husband is having an affair.
That's it. That's the thing that ruins her life.
She agonizes over what fault in her led to him stepping out. Had she failed to keep up her physical appearance? Had she been a bad mother? Should she have had a career, but oh, would having had a career made her a worse wife and mother? Should she stand her ground and tell him to end the affair, or would that be too aggressive and push him away? Did her not standing her ground push him away?
It's a wild roller-coaster.
For a person who wasn't socialized as a girl I reckon it'd be pretty inciteful to read something like this, but for anyone who was socialized as a girl I just can't imagine that this would be a satisfying experience or even particularly cathartic.
Again, I find myself in the difficult position of trying to parse through the etiquette of rating a short story collection. I'm also walking on eggshells here because I know Simone de Beauvoir is so beloved outside of just the fiction she wrote, but that's not within my purview to get into, and plus, death of the author and all that.
Unlike some of the other short story collections I've rated, this one feels more cohesive and thoughtfully put-together. None of the three stories feels superfluous or tacked on. That being said, I didn't find the overall experience to be greater than the sum of its parts. And, frankly, some of it is simply down to my personal preferences when it comes to writing style.
The first story in the collection, Age of Discretion (a 5/5 for me), was the one I enjoyed most. It felt tight, it addressed some pretty hefty anxieties around aging, specifically. It also had the honor of not being depressing.
"The sight of the changing world is miraculous and heartbreaking, both at the same time.”
This summaries beautifully the thesis de Beauvoir seems to be driving at in the story. Our protagonist and her husband are both in or entering 'old age.' Initially, our protagonist is quite content. She's a professor working on yet another in a string of successful publications on literary criticism and at ease with the idea that much of her life in front of her will involve looking fondly backwards at the journey behind her.
Her husband, on the other hand, struggles with aging, even going so far as to assert that the first part of a scientist's career is about pushing the field forward, and the latter half of his career is him holding it back.
Our protagonist too is ultimately dragged into his feelings of worthlessness when her newest book, which she was so certain was groundbreaking, is panned as a simple rehash of ideas she's published before. Suddenly it is revealed that her lack of aging anxiety hinged on the notion that she was still, in some manner, 'useful' or 'productive.' Without that security blanket, she felt much the same as her husband, bitterly saying:
You are so young!” she added.
People often tell me that, and I feel flattered. All at once the remark irritated me. It is an equivocal compliment and one that foretells a disagreeable future. Remaining young means retaining lively energy, cheerfulness and vitality of mind. So the fate of old age is the dull
daily round, gloom and dotage. I am not young: I am well preserved, which is quite different. Well preserved; and maybe finished and done with.
This, along with a general lack of clear communication with her husband and a rift with her son, leads her to fall into a spiraling depression she is only able to pull herself out of by directly facing what she perceives to be her failures.
She and her husband actually talk about her feelings of them growing apart, and she discovers that this was purely a miscommunication between them. He reveals as well his plans to take several physics courses to bring himself up-to-date even though he plans to retire. "Just to know it," he says. And he encourages her to pursue other intellectual interests, to expand her own knowledge base and find something new to be excited about.
In short, my takeaway, as a person in their late 20s, was that while aging may be characterized as de Beauvoir initially does, by saying: "sluggishness of the heart is called indulgence and wisdom: in fact it is death settling down within you." But it doesn't have to be this way; youth may lend itself to intellectual curiosity and flexibility, and perhaps, to some degree, to innovation, but as her husband points out, age only holds those things back to the degree that a person is unwilling to work out the muscles. If this weren't true, my 80 year-old grandfather wouldn't have been able to develop proficiency in smartphone technology.
Similarly, it prompted me, as an 'aging' young person, to push back against my own crochety attitude towards things like TikTok. I can go down that road, but de Beauvoir warns us that that kind of ageist superiority ultimately just bites us in the ass.
The second story, 'The Monologue,' I have admittedly less to say anything about. That kind of stream of consciousness writing is simply not something I enjoy reading even though I can fully appreciate that it can be done with purpose and good craftmanship. A reviewer for The Science Survey
summarized 'The Monologue' incredibly well, saying: 'The Monologue is, amongst a plethora of other, more sophisticated descriptive phrases, exhausting. [...] De Beauvoir did this by design. [...] She knows how agonizing it must be to endure the seemingly endless soliloquy [...] She claims space for herself, knowing that she deserves it."
This is all fine and true, and having read it I can see the feminist argument to be made for its existence, but I just don't like reading stream of consciousness, so I was never going to like this any more than I liked that aspect of Faulkner's 'The Sound and the Fury.'
The third and titular story, 'The Woman Destroyed' was, in a word, depressing, in almost every aspect. Written as an epistolary diary of our protagonist, this, more than even 'The Monologue,' was a slog. Getting through this story was exhausting. Not that it was dense in style or form; each diary entry was a pretty easy bite, but the sheer weight and repetitiveness of her anxiety that quickly slides into the realm of pure neuroticism, is painful.
This also felt the most like a feminist text. Not feminist in the academic sense, but more in the sense that this touches on something of the horror of womanhood within a patriarchal system, particularly a system in which that pressure is invisible. There are no laws that actively relegate women to second-class citizens, but there are nonetheless certain social expectations baked into the ways in which such a society socializes girls to behave and think.
Our protagonist discovers her husband is having an affair.
That's it. That's the thing that ruins her life.
She agonizes over what fault in her led to him stepping out. Had she failed to keep up her physical appearance? Had she been a bad mother? Should she have had a career, but oh, would having had a career made her a worse wife and mother? Should she stand her ground and tell him to end the affair, or would that be too aggressive and push him away? Did her not standing her ground push him away?
It's a wild roller-coaster.
For a person who wasn't socialized as a girl I reckon it'd be pretty inciteful to read something like this, but for anyone who was socialized as a girl I just can't imagine that this would be a satisfying experience or even particularly cathartic.