She Came to Stay
Set in Paris on the eve of World War II and sizzling with love, anger, and revenge, She Came to Stay explores the changes wrought in the soul of a woman and a city soon to fall. Although Franoise considers her relationship with Pierre an open one, she falls prey to jealousy when the gamine Xavire catches his attention. The moody young woman from the countryside pries her way between Franoise and Pierre, playing up to each one and deviously pulling them apart, until the only way out of the triangle is destruction.
She Came to Stay Accessories
 The Mandarins
The Second Sex
The Ethics Of Ambiguity
All Men Are Mortal
Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter (Perennial Classics)
Woman Destroyed (Pantheon Modern Writers)
Adieux: A Farewell to Sartre
Letters to Sartre
The Coming of Age
No Exit and Three Other Plays
She Came to Stay Reviews
This book made me sad, happy, angry, interested.pretty much everything. Hey, we are all just human and this book is so honest it is almost painful. A great read even if some were disappointed by De Beauvoir for preaching one thing an living the other. I was going from ''kick her out'' to ''kick him out'', to ''get real'' even if aware of existentialist ideas behind it and what I am 'supposed' to think about it.
She had always made a point of disregarding her own dreams and desires, but this self-effacing wisdom now revolted her. 318) . The ending surprised me, even though I had read from other reviews that Xaviere's demise would happen.I just didn't know HOW it would happen. "Impulsively, she took Francoise's face between her hands and began to kiss her with fanatical devotion. 360). Her palms were moist.
They were sacred kisses, purifying Xaviere for all her defilement and restoring her self-respect. My favorite character is Francoise, who valiantly struggles with her internal battles of reason, love, suspicion, and jealousy throughout the novel. "Open" meaning that they were ideally free to love and have affairs with others. Why didn't she make up her mind to go after what she wanted." (pg.
The character of Xaviere stands out as the ultimate manipulative, volatile, and self-centered, young woman who doesn't care or think about the consequences of her actions and words upon others, and who also elicts the best and worst emotions out of everyone around her:. With these soft lips on her face, Francoise felt so noble, so ethereal, so sublime, that it sickened her heart; she longed for a human friendship, and not this fanatical and imperious worship of which she was forced to be the docile idol." (pg. . Read it and discover how one woman finally decided she had had enough.
She Came to Stay is an engaging, emotional, rollercoaster of a ride tempered with some reason. "She drank a little wine. She spends most of the novel trying so hard to be civil and responsible toward Xaviere, but then you find a refreshing turn in her change of heart:. Based on the real life trio of Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sarte, and Olga Kosakievicza student of de Beauvoir, She Came To Stay is a tale of the complications that arise when a young, precocious woman is brought into a long-standing, deep, and intellectual relationship between two older, "open" lovers. De Beauvoir gets inside her characters' thoughts and feelings with an intensity reminiscent of novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky.
This novel brims with emotions vacillating from love to hate, jealousy to despair, self-controlled calmness to revenge.
233) with Pierre. 291). The romantic threesome de Beauvoir creates for Francoise sears her protagonist "like a sharp burn" (p. Although SHE CAME TO STAY may be read as a love story examining the complex dilemmas posed by love (demonstrating existential relationships are perhaps easier in theory than in reality) and the destructive powers of relationships, it also succeeds on a more philosphical level. Readers interested in reading more about de Beauvoir's real-life triangle with Sartre and Lamblin may consider reading Lamblin's memoir, A DISGRACEFUL AFFAIR, in which Lamblin offers her first-hand account of her unconventional relationship with the two French existentialists.
Francoise becomes angry, insanely jealous, and then disillusioned with her dream of "one life, one work, one love" (p. Merritt Set in pre-World War II Paris, de Beauvoir's first novel, SHE CAME TO STAY (1954) provides a fictional portrait of her unconventional relationship with her lifelong partner, Sartre, and her protege, Bianca Bienenfeld. The novel demonstrates that a relationship can lead not only to ecstasy, but also to a personal, life-changing crisis. Their menage a trois began in 1938, when de Beauvoir introduced Bienenfeld (aka Bianca Lamblin) to her partner/lover, Sartre, who was thirty-three, and ended in 1940 when, at de Beauvoir's encouragement, Sartre abandoned Lamblin on the eve of WWII.
By the end of the novel, Xaviere is destroyed by an act of revenge, and Francoise is alone and estranged from Pierre. SHE CAME TO STAY tells the story of Francoise, her lover, Pierre, and Xaviere, an emotionally unstable young woman from Rouen who comes between them. 291). the entire universe was was engulfed in it, and Francoise, forever excluded from the world, was herself dissolved in this void" (p.
G. While SHE CAME TO STAY may not measure up to the writing standards de Beauvoir later set with THE MANDARINS and THE SECOND SEX, it is nevertheless a powerful novel. "It was like death," de Beauvior writes, "a total negation, an eternal absence. 207).
Eventually, her relationship leads her to experience life without meaning: an existential "abyss of nothingness" (p. Relationships are never easy, even for intellectuals like Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre.
When Francoise and Pierre are in the presence of Xaviere she becomes upset because she, Xaviere, feels her feelings are being dissected. The book has always been too schematic for my tastes as fiction qua fiction, but one cannot help being intrigued by the historical notoriety of the book. Francoise believes that the life of Pierre and hers that is perfect as to form is beginning to lose its substance. When Xaviere comes to live in the same hotel as Francoise, she spends much of her time alone in her room. While Pierre is acting Francoise is able to work on her novel.
The night of the New Year's Eve party Pierre had offered to give up Xaviere and now it seems to Francoise that Xaviere and Pierre are in love. Since Pierre and Francoise are supposed to have a perfect love, she, Francoise, becomes annoyed when Pierre and Xaviere bring their love to her attention. Francoise persuades Xaviere to accompany her to the bar. At a party Francoise and Pierre's sister Elisabeth view the actresses as having an embalmed youth to their appearances. In the end Francoise chooses to be alone, Pierre is in the service, (it is 1940 or so and the war is going on), and Xaviere is estranged. She becomes ill and has to move to a nursing home for care. I have also read that situations such as the one described here gave rise to ethical complaints from parents causing De Beauvoir to lose her license to teach.
Both Pierre and Francoise seek to influence Xaviere and she suffers from their attention. This is part of his generosity. After Xaviere moves to Paris Francoise finds that she has little free time. Francoise and Pierre Labrousse are a couple. An example of Xaviere's thinking is Xaviere holds that concerts are a ridiculous convention since it is silly to arrange to hear music at a certain time.
When Pierre becomes interested in a person he is able to carry on a conversation for hours with angelic ferocity. Pierre speaks of his confounded mania for making a conquest. Xaviere's real life has yet to begin.
Pierre suggests that perhaps he and Francoise can help Xaviere manage to live in Paris. This is the novel, I have read, in which the author worked out her ideas about freedom, existentialism, and in turn transmitted them to Jean Paul Sartre for philosophical exposition. Francoise endeavors to focus on everyone as part of a trio.
(Alternatively Francoise and Xaviere end up dead). Elisabeth thinks that Xaviere is a sly fickle girl. Francoise comes to the realization that watching Xaviere so closely is squalid.
After the rehearsal of Pierre's play, Pierre and Francoise go to a bar by habit. Xaviere is a student from Rouen.
Why does Simone, a woman with impeccable philosophical credentials, contradict her own ontology. That was Sartre)., her elders discipline her. First of all, it is a little too quotidian. Not to choose is to choose. While Simone left her real life rival unharmed, her alter ego Francoise murders her rival. At the same time, this book accurately portrays some very real human emotions.
Based on the trio well-known to readers of Simone's memoirs, this is a flawed but still enjoyable work. Second, there seems to be a basic flaw in the "plot," that arises from the basic situation of the Sartre-de Beauvoir shared life and that is while both Francoise and Pierre can excuse their own sexual explorations, when their protege Xaviere exercises her own FREEDOM OF CHOICE (remember that slogan from the 60s. This is Simone's first published novel and writing this book removed her own writer's block and enabled her to go on to win the Prix Goncourt and, of course, write "The Second Sex." While it is hardly "feminist," after all, the main woman character has an intellectually intimate but apparently sexless relationship with a man who rules her life, it is a woman's book. How many women, involved in a triangle, have wanted to eliminate their rival. We know that Simone was a work-a-holic who parceled out her day into writing and confering with J-P, but that sort of lifestyle is too accurately portrayed in this novel.
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