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Article: Simone de Beauvoir: A Biography.
- Article from:
- The New Leader
- Article date:
- April 30, 1990
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1990 American Labor Conference on International Affairs. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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THIS is an excellent biography. It engages us in the intricate ambiguities surrounding the life of the woman who has often been regarded as the world's greatest, or certainly most influential, feminist. Betty Friedan, Kate Millett, Germaine Greer-they afl seem small fry beside Simone de Beauvoir, whose The Second Sex, if not the movement's Bible, is at least its Book of Mormon. Yet one is always perplexed when confronting the legend of Simone de Beauvoir and the reality of her life: How far can we regard her as speaking with the universalizing force of an original and commanding mind, and how far should we see her as the priestess of that conventicle of the 1940s and '50s ...