Simone de Beauvoir's Struggle against Separation: Radical Challenges to Heterosexual Norms in Les inséparables and "La lesbienne"

Abstract

Abstract: Today, we face an epidemic of loneliness and Simone de Beauvoir's writings about separation—and about struggling to find new means of connecting—have never been more relevant. Throughout her fiction and philosophy, Beauvoir repeatedly wrote about women's desires to "shatter" what separated them. The theme of overcoming separation appears in "La lesbienne," a controversial chapter of Le deuxième sexe , and reappears in her novella Les inséparables , drafted in 1954 but only published in 2020. This article—the first study of the theme of separation in several of Beauvoir's works—situates these two texts within a twenty-year period. From 1944, when Beauvoir published Pyrrhus et Cinéas , to 1964, when she gave her lecture "Que peut la littérature ?," her thinking about separation and connection transformed radically. The author became increasingly committed to exposing and fighting against the heterosexual norms that separate women. Ultimately, Les inséparables , read in conjunction with "La lesbienne," illuminates Beauvoir's various writings about separation; the novella reveals that her revolutionary commitment to breaking taboos and connecting with readers grew out of the shame and frustration she experienced as she tried to communicate her love to another woman.