The Death of Maternity?
Simone de Beauvoir's A Very Easy Death
in French Politics, Culture & Society
Author:
Christie McDonald
Christie McDonald
Search for other papers by Christie McDonald in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Search for other papers by Christie McDonald in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Contrasting the view of motherhood in Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex with the description of her mother's illness and death in A Very Easy Death, this essay examines the revelation of feelings previously unexplored in the relationship to her mother. Faced with a life-shattering experience, Beauvoir revisits issues not only about motherhood and maternity from her philosophical and sociological study, but her own feelings about her mother and disturbing ways in which doctors and families withheld knowledge from the dying in the mid-twentieth century.