This title examines the French feminist's memoirs and philosophical writings, discusses essential beliefs, and assesses her influence on the Women's movement.

 

Simone de Beauvoir has long been regarded as one of the founding mothers of feminism and accepted as an inspiration to generation of feminists. The Second Sex has remained one of the most influential of all feminist texts and de Beauvoir’s own life is regarded as a model of that of a ‘liberated’ woman. Mary Evans argues that de Beauvoir presents to feminists an exaggerated dichotomy between the sexes whilst at the same time advocating the acceptance, by women, of many male patterns of thought and action.

 

In the sympathetic and illuminating study Mary Evans examines critically the central premises of de Beauvoir’s work and assesses the contribution of her work - in terms of both its negative and positive aspects - to western feminism.

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Simone de Beauvoir; A Feminist Mandarin

Tavistock

London and New York, 1985

ISBN 0 422 79510 0

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