Simone de Beauvoir (post 2): Multiple Consciousness and Puzzling Self-Contradiction suggest a fiction writer with multiple personality trait

In the last half of The Mandarins, there are three examples of multiple consciousness. First, when Paula is home after a psychiatric hospitalization, Anne (the character most representative of the author in this semi-autobiographical novel) describes how her friend Paula’s handwriting has changed and matured (1, p. 627). A sudden maturation in a person’s handwriting suggests a change from a child-aged to an adult alternate personality. Second, after Anne’s lover admits that he no longer loves her, Anne has dissociated, multiple consciousness: “I heard my voice from a long way off” (1, p. 653). Third, contemplating suicide at the end of the novel, Anne says, “Someone was going to poison me. It was I; it was no longer I” (1, p. 734). Readers of old posts know that she wouldn’t have been the first character in a novel who was killed by her alternate personality.

Simone de Beauvoir was bisexual and had her teaching license temporarily revoked for allegedly seducing a female student (2), which, for the famous feminist author of The Second Sex, were remarkable, puzzling, self-contradictions.

Deirdre Bair sums up her impression of Simone de Beauvoir on the last page of her biography: “Much that she did confused her supporters and confounded her critics…She was affectionate, generous, witty and wise, but she was also quirky and opinionated, gruff and sometimes without a sense of humor. She was a beautiful woman unaware of her striking physical presence, but she was also awkward and ill-kempt…a cultural icon. She regretted being known in France as ‘Our Sacred Monster’…She may have been a mass of contradictions…” (3, p. 618).

1. Simone de Beauvoir. The Mandarins [1954]. Translated by Leonard M. Friedman. Introduction by Doris Lessing [1993]. London, Harper Perennial, 2005.

2. Wikipedia. “Simone de Beauvoir.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simone_de_Beauvoir

3. Deirdre Bair. Simone de Beauvoir: A Biography. New York, Summit Books, 1990.