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10 Simone de Beauvoir’s “Marguerite” as a Possible Source of Inspiration for Jean-Paul Sartre’s “The Childhood of a Leader” Eliane Lecarme-Tabone Translated by Kevin W. Gray The relationship between Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre continues to fascinate both scholars and casual readers.1 Beyond the obvious questions brought up by their lovers’ pact, there is also the problem of discerning how each influenced the other intellectually. The necessary reevaluation of their relationship , carried out by Anglo-Saxon intellectuals within the last couple of decades, has resulted in a greater appreciation for Simone de Beauvoir’s contributions , while nonetheless suffering from polemical excess.2 For instance, it is not at all clear how we can know for certain who was the first person to conceive of such-and-such an idea when we ignore the precise content of their conversations (after all, their discussions were places to hash out their philosophical ideas). The inquiry is nonetheless easier when it is a question of literary texts (and not of philosophical ones): a well-conceived chronological investigation should allow us to formulate several hypotheses. In this text, I want to show how the book When Things of the Spirit Come First by Beauvoir could have inspired Sartre’s The Wall—to quote the Bible, I want to “give unto Caesar”—while at the same time reflecting on the ways the couple worked together . Sartre and Beauvoir began to write short stories at about the same time. Michel Rybalka tells us that Sartre became interested in the early 1930s in writing fulllength novels as well as short stories.3 He only began to do this later—according to Beauvoir’s The Prime of Life, it was during a cruise to Norway during the summer of 1935 that Sartre tried his hand “with a short piece entitled Le Soleil Job Name: -- /302299t Simone de Beauvoir’s “Marguerite” 181 de minuit, which he lost somewhere in the Causses and never began again” (PL, 229; FA, 328). He tried again in 1936 with “Erostrate,” the first of five short stories that appeared together as the volume The Wall in February 1939.4 Beauvoir, on the other hand, first tried to write novels before turning to short stories herself in 1935: “I had written two long novels in which the opening chapters held up pretty well, but which then degenerated into a mere shapeless hodgepodge. This time I determined to compose some fairly brief stories, and to discipline them rigorously from beginning to end” (PL, 178–79; FA, 255). Unlike Sartre, who collected his texts into a volume after the fact,5 Beauvoir tried to write her collection of stories such that common ideas ran throughout the book: the same characters occur, though with different levels of prominence, from one short story to another, assuring an internal unity to the work.6 I want to examine the last of the five stories that make up each of the volumes that I am interested in here. Besides occupying a prominent place at the end of each volume, “The Childhood of a Leader” and “Marguerite” share a number of similar characteristics. Even though Sartre’s story is longer,7 the two stories recount the lives of their protagonists in a chronological order, starting from their childhood. Sartre begins his story with the central character, Lucien Fleurier, dressed up as a tiny angel at a childhood party, and ends during his second year of study at the École Centrale. Marguerite recounts her life from the age of three until the moment that she writes a competitive national exam (which we are led to believe is the French agrégation8 ), and even looks ahead to the two years that would follow the exam. The two stories are effectively Bildungsroman—they retrace the path of two young students from their youth through their formative experiences (often experiences of trial-and-error) to maturity. In “The Childhood of a Leader,” Sartre changes the model, denouncing the outcome of the main character’s life. Lucien Fleurier becomes a leader, nonetheless making reprehensible choices (he becomes a Fascist and an anti-Semite), and falls into inauthenticity by rejecting his fundamental freedom. His experiences of growth are banal or ridiculous .9 While Beauvoir’s story is not a parody of the model, “Marguerite” also does not conform to the norms of a Bildungsroman. After all, the young woman ’s experiences are entirely negative—she has to first pass through the intellectual...

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