Inseparable

Inseperable / Simone de Beauvoir
trans. from the French by Sandra Smith
NY: Echo, c2021
208 p.

This is a book first written in 1954, but left in Simone de Beauvoir's papers until it was published in 2021. It is a semi-autobiographical story about Simone de Beauvoir (Sylvie) and her 'inseparable' friend, Elisabeth ‘Zaza‘ Lacoin (Andrée).

Sylvie is telling the story; she is from a poorer, smaller French family, but her best friend Andrée comes from a large, traditional French family, heavily Catholic and very focused on social expectations. The narrative covers the time between their first meeting at nine years old, into adolescence, and the differing expectations on them as they grow older, until it stops short in 1929. 

These two friends fight against the expectations for women at that time and place; but Sylvie is much freer to do so; Andrée is bound up in her large family, never left alone and forced to hide her thoughts and feelings in order to meet her mother's demands and learn the social milieu she's expected to continue living in forever. It's tortuous. And as they get older, Andrée's mother also tries to wedge some distance between the two girls, as the more liberal Sylvie is not considered a good influence (or a useful connection, for that matter). Andrée's burgeoning relationship with the boy next door is also crushed out, since he is half-Jewish and thus not suitable in her family's eyes. 

It's a small book, told in dreamy French, with a feeling of the hazy past hanging over a lot of it. It's based on a real friendship that de Beauvoir had, and you can feel how much this relationship haunted her, how much she needed to write it out. It gives a solid sense of what it was like to live in this milieu, the social rules that constricted any personal choices, and the weight of family in shaping a life. It is a snapshot, but one that stays with you for a long time.