This book is so hard to read for its themes, but so beautiful. de Beauvoir fictionalises her philosophy, her outrage at the female experience in society, especially for older women. She is brutal towards her characters to represent just how cruel life is to women everywhere, and this book reads like a prolonged scream.

The book is made up of three different stories. The first one, the woman destroyed proper, talks about an affair from the pov of the scorned wife. She is objectively a rather weak woman, who gets easily pushed around and sees staying with her husband as her ultimate goal, no matter how humiliating. But through the narrative, the author clearly highlights how absurd it is for her to take the blame for everything, how her weakness is the result of the society around her. I appreciated the two sides of the story, her failure to be supportive etc, it all made it so real. It was so heartbreaking. Monique descends into mental illness very rapidly, as we see her making excuses for herself or pretending like she can stay calm and hold her ground in the face of her husband’s recklessness. The way she alienates herself from her friends due to her obsession, the lack of support from her daughters, her husband’s duplicity toward her. And what’s even more powerful is that she’s not better by the end. She’s significantly worse. It’s so rage inducing but like in a good way.

The second story is about a mother-son relationship. I can’t relate but it was equally as thought provoking and heartbreaking. It must be hard to reconcile the way you raised a son with what he chooses to become once he gets to that point. The second theme is accepting old age, the declining quality of one’s life work, especially in academia, and it’s deeply touching. I don’t know how autobiographical it is but it really felt like it came from a real place for de Beauvoir.

The final part, the monologue, is just the unfiltered rambling of a woman whose husband is cheating on her (I think? It’s been a few days). It’s just female rage on steroids with all the awkwardly translated swear words and obscenities you can imagine. It was probably very modern when it came out, a realistic and super ragey stream of consciousness which very much calls back to the title. I appreciated it for what it was.

Overall, a very interesting piece of work, a great author.