Simone de Beauvoir

In Our Time

BBC

History

4.6 • 9.2K Ratings

🗓️ 22 October 2015

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir. "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman," she wrote in her best known and most influential work, The Second Sex, her exploration of what it means to be a woman in a world defined by men. Published in 1949, it was an immediate success with the thousands of women who bought it. Many male critics felt men came out of it rather badly. Beauvoir was born in 1908 to a high bourgeois family and it was perhaps her good fortune that her father lost his money when she was a girl. With no dowry, she pursued her education in Paris to get work and in a key exam to allow her to teach philosophy, came second only to Jean Paul Sartre. He was retaking. They became lovers and, for the rest of their lives together, intellectual sparring partners. Sartre concentrated on existentialist philosophy; Beauvoir explored that, and existentialist ethics, plus the novel and, increasingly in the decades up to her death in 1986, the situation of women in the world. With Christina Howells Professor of French and Fellow of Wadham College at the University of Oxford Margaret Atack Professor of French at the University of Leeds And Ursula Tidd Professor of Modern French Literature and Thought at the University of Manchester Producer: Simon Tillotson.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Thank you for downloading this episode of In Our Time for more details about In Our Time,
0:04.2	and for our terms of use, please go to bbc.co.uk slash radio4.
0:09.0	I hope you enjoy the program.
0:11.0	Hello, quote, one is not born, but rather becomes a woman.
0:15.1	End of quote.
0:16.1	So wrote Simone de Beauvoir in her best known and most influential work The Second Sex.
0:20.6	Her exploration of what it means to be a woman in a world defined by men.
0:25.2	Which in 1949, it was an immediate success with thousands of women who bought it, much less
0:30.2	serve with some of the male critics.
0:32.6	Beauvoir was born in France in 1908 to a high bourgeois family, and some commented to say
0:37.8	that it was her good fortune that her father lost his fortune when she was a girl.
0:41.8	With no diary, she pursued her education to get work, and in a key exam to allow her
0:45.8	to teach philosophy came second only to Jean Paul Sartre.
0:49.5	He was retaking it.
0:51.0	They became lovers and for the rest of their lives together, intellectual sparring partners.
0:55.1	Sartre concentrated on existentialist philosophy.
0:58.1	Beauvoir explored that and existential ethics, plus she wrote the novel, the most successful,
1:03.4	was the Mandarin's and increasingly in the decades up to her death in 1986.
1:08.5	She wrote about the situation of women in the world.
1:11.0	With me to discuss Simone de Beauvoir are, Christina Howells, Professor of French and
1:15.6	Fellow of Worm College at the University of Oxford, Margaret Aitak, Professor of French
1:20.6	at the University of Leeds, and Ursula Tid, Professor of Modern French Literature and
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.