Editing Simone de Beauvoir (section)

==Personal life==

=== Early years ===
Beauvoir was born on 9 January 1908,<ref>{{cite news|url= https://www.upi.com/Top_News/2020/01/09/UPI-Almanac-for-Thursday-Jan-9-2020/6871578415895/|title= UPI Almanac for Thursday, Jan. 9, 2020|work= [[United Press International]] | date= 9 January 2020|access-date=16 January 2020 |archive-date= 15 January 2020|archive-url= https://archive.today/20200115192229/https://www.upi.com/Top_News/2020/01/09/UPI-Almanac-for-Thursday-Jan-9-2020/6871578415895/|url-status=live|quote=...French novelist Simone de Beauvoir in 1908}}</ref> into a [[bourgeois]] [[Paris]]ian family in the [[6th arrondissement of Paris|6th arrondissement]].<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/1999/jun/06/classics.simonedebeauvoir |title=Still the second sex|first=Maureen|last=Freely|author-link=Maureen Freely|date=6 June 1999|access-date=6 January 2019|work=[[The Guardian]]|location=UK|archive-date=13 April 2019|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20190413171557/https://www.theguardian.com/books/1999/jun/06/classics.simonedebeauvoir| url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/jan/08/top10s.debeauvoir |title=Lisa Appignanesi's top 10 books by and about Simone de Beauvoir|work=The Guardian|location=UK|date=8 January 2008|access-date=6 January 2019|archive-date=13 April 2019|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20190413154026/https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/jan/08/top10s.debeauvoir|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite magazine|url=https://newrepublic.com/article/118617/anne-hollander-reviews-simone-de-beauvoir-biography-deidre-bair |title=The Open Marriage of True Minds|first=Anne|last=Hollander|date=11 June 1990|magazine=[[The New Republic]]|access-date=6 January 2019|archive-date=12 September 2015 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20150912233548/https://newrepublic.com/article/118617/anne-hollander-reviews-simone-de-beauvoir-biography-deidre-bair|url-status=live}}</ref> Her parents were Georges Bertrand de Beauvoir, a lawyer who once aspired to be an actor,<ref name = "IEP Biography">Mussett, Shannon. [http://www.iep.utm.edu/beauvoir/#H1 Simone de Beauvoir Biography on the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy]. Retrieved 11 April 2010.</ref> and Françoise Beauvoir (née Brasseur), a wealthy banker's daughter and devout [[Catholic]]. Simone had a sister, [[Hélène de Beauvoir|Hélène]], who was born two years later, on 6 June 1910. The family struggled to maintain their bourgeois status after losing much of their fortune shortly after [[World War I]], and Françoise insisted the two daughters be sent to a prestigious convent school.

Beauvoir was intellectually precocious, fueled by her father's encouragement; he reportedly would boast, "Simone thinks like a man!"<ref>Bair, p. 60</ref> Because of her family's straitened circumstances, she could no longer rely on her [[dowry]], and like other middle-class girls of her age, her marriage opportunities were put at risk. She took this opportunity to take steps towards earning a living for herself.<ref name="oxfordreference.com">{{Cite book|url=http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780195148909.001.0001/acref-9780195148909-e-90|isbn = 978-0-19-514890-9|title = The Oxford Encyclopedia Women in World History|chapter = Beauvoir, Simone de|date = January 2008|publisher = Oxford University Press| doi=10.1093/acref/9780195148909.001.0001 }}</ref>

She first worked with [[Maurice Merleau-Ponty]] and [[Claude Lévi-Strauss]], when all three completed their practice teaching requirements at the same secondary school. Although not officially enrolled, she sat in on courses at the [[École Normale Supérieure]] in preparation for the ''[[agrégation]]'' in philosophy, a highly competitive postgraduate examination that serves as a national ranking of students. It was while studying for it that she met École Normale students [[Jean-Paul Sartre]], [[Paul Nizan]], and [[René Maheu]] (who gave her the lasting nickname "''Castor''", or "Beaver").<ref name = "IEP Biography" /> The jury for the ''agrégation'' narrowly awarded Sartre first place instead of Beauvoir, who placed second and, at age 21, was the youngest person ever to pass the exam.<ref>Menand, Louis. [http://www.newYorker.com/archive/2005/09/26/050926crbo_books?currentPage=all "Stand By Your Man"]. ''The New Yorker'', 26 September 2005. Retrieved 11 May 2010.</ref> Additionally, Beauvoir finished an exam for the certificate of "General Philosophy and Logic" second to [[Simone Weil]]. Her success as the eighth woman to pass the ''agrégation'' solidified her economic independence and furthered her feminist ideology.<ref name=":0" />

Writing of her youth in ''Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter,'' she said:
"...my father's individualism and pagan ethical standards were in complete contrast to the rigidly moral conventionalism of my mother's teaching. This disequilibrium, which made my life a kind of endless disputation, is the main reason why I became an intellectual."<ref>''Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter'', Book One</ref>

==== Education ====
Beauvoir pursued post-secondary education after completing her high school years at {{Interlanguage link multi|Cours Desir|fr}}.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Paris: sur les traces de Simone de Beauvoir |trans-title=Paris: On the trail of Simone de Beauvoir |url= https://www.en-vols.com/inspirations/culture/paris-simone-de-beauvoir/ |website=en-vols.com |date=22 November 2022 |access-date=31 July 2023 |language=fr}}</ref> After passing baccalaureate exams in mathematics and philosophy at the age of seventeen in 1925, she studied mathematics at the [[Institut Catholique de Paris]] and literature/languages at the {{Interlanguage link multi|Institut Sainte-Marie|fr}}. She then studied philosophy at the [[University of Paris|Sorbonne]] and after completing her degree in 1928, wrote her ''[[Diplôme d'études supérieures spécialisées]]'' (roughly equivalent to an [[Master of Arts|M.A.]] thesis) on [[Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz|Leibniz]] for [[Léon Brunschvicg]] in 1929 (the topic was "Le concept chez Leibniz" ["The Concept in Leibniz"]).<ref>Margaret A. Simons (ed.), ''Feminist Interpretations of Simone de Beauvoir'', Penn State Press, 1 November 2010, p. 3.</ref>

==== Religious upbringing ====
Beauvoir was raised in a Catholic household. In her youth, she was sent to convent schools. She was deeply religious as a child, at one point intending to become a nun. At age 14, Beauvoir began to question her faith, consequently abandoning religion in her early teens and remaining an [[atheism|atheist]] for the rest of her life.<ref name="auto">{{Cite web|title=Simone de Beauvoir|url=https://www.biography.com/scholar/simone-de-beauvoir|access-date=2021-03-04|website=Biography|date=9 July 2020 |language=en-us}}</ref><ref name="Thurman">Thurman, Judith. [https://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/books/excerpt-introduction-second-sex.html Introduction to Simone de Beauvoir's ''The Second Sex'']. Excerpt published in ''The New York Times'' 27 May 2010. Retrieved 11 April 2010.</ref> To explain her atheist beliefs, Beauvoir stated, "Faith allows an evasion of those difficulties which the atheist confronts honestly. And to crown all, the believer derives a sense of great superiority from this very cowardice itself."<ref>{{Cite book|last=Bertrand de Beauvoir|first=Simone|title=All Said and Done|publisher=G. P. Putnam's & Sons|year=1974|isbn=9780399112515|location=New York|pages=478|translator-last=O'Brian|translator-first=Patrick}}</ref>

=== Middle years ===
[[File:Sartre and de Beauvoir at Balzac Memorial.jpg|thumb|upright|Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir at the Balzac Memorial]]
From 1929 through 1943, Beauvoir taught at the [[lycée]] level until she could support herself solely on the earnings of her writings. She taught at the {{Interlanguage link multi|Lycée Montgrand|fr}} ([[Marseille]]), the {{Interlanguage link multi|Lycée Jeanne-d'Arc (Rouen)|fr}}, and the {{Interlanguage link multi|Lycée Molière (Paris)|fr}} (1936–39).<ref>Kelly Oliver (ed.), ''French Feminism Reader'', Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2000, p. 1; ''Bulletin 2006 de l'Association amicale des anciens et anciennes élèves du lycée Molière'', 2006, p. 22.</ref>

During the trial of [[Robert Brasillach]] Beauvoir was among a small number of prominent intellectuals advocating for his execution for 'intellectual crimes'. She defended this decision in her 1946 essay "An Eye for an Eye".<ref>David Newcastle, [https://tikhanovlibrary.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-pierre-drieu-la-rochelle/ ''The Rise and Fall of Pierre Drieu la Rochlle''], Gilles, Tikhanov Library, 2024, preface</ref><ref>[https://academic.oup.com/book/11006/chapter-abstract/159332034?redirectedFrom=fulltext “An Eye for an Eye”: The Question of Revenge] Sonia Kirks</ref>

==== Jean-Paul Sartre ====
Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre met during her college years. Intrigued by her determination as an educator, he intended to make their relationship romantic. However, she had no interest in doing so.<ref name="auto" /> She later changed her mind, and in October 1929, [[Jean-Paul Sartre]] and Beauvoir became a couple for the next 51 years, until his death in 1980.<ref>Seymour-Jones 2008, back cover.</ref> After they were confronted by her father, Sartre asked her to marry him on a provisional basis. One day while they were sitting on a bench outside the Louvre, he said, "Let's sign a two-year lease".<ref>Bair, p. 155-7</ref> Though Beauvoir wrote, "Marriage was impossible. I had no dowry", scholars point out that her ideal relationships described in ''The Second Sex'' and elsewhere bore little resemblance to the marriage standards of the day.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Ward |first1=Julie K. |title=Reciprocity and Friendship in Beauvoir's Thought |journal=Hypatia |date=November 1999 |volume=14 |issue=4 |pages=36–49 |doi=10.1111/j.1527-2001.1999.tb01251.x|s2cid=146561354 }}</ref>
<blockquote>I think marriage is a very alienating institution, for men as well as for women. I think it's a very dangerous institution—dangerous for men, who find themselves trapped, saddled with a wife and children to support; dangerous for women, who aren't financially independent and end up by depending on men who can throw them out when they are 40; and very dangerous for children, because their parents vent all their frustrations and mutual hatred on them. The very words 'conjugal rights' are dreadful. Any institution which solders one person to another, obliging people to sleep together who no longer want to is a bad one.<ref>{{Cite news|title=A talk with Simone de Beauvoir |date=2 June 1974 |last=Moorehead |first=Caroline |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1974/06/02/archives/a-talk-with-simone-de-beauvoirr-marriage-is-an-alienating.html |access-date=30 August 2023}}</ref>
</blockquote>

Instead, she and Sartre entered into a lifelong "soul partnership", which was sexual but not exclusive, nor did it involve living together.<ref>{{cite news| url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/jun/10/gender.politicsphilosophyandsociety |location=London |work=The Guardian  | first=Lisa | last=Appignanesi | title=Our relationship was the greatest achievement of my life | date=10 June 2005}}</ref> She chose never to marry and never had children. This gave her the time to advance her education and engage in political causes, write and teach, and take lovers.<ref name="Schneir">{{cite book |author=Schneir, Miriam |url=https://archive.org/details/feminisminourtim0000unse/page/5 |title=Feminism in Our Time |publisher=Vintage Books |year=1994 |isbn=0-679-74508-4 |page=[https://archive.org/details/feminisminourtim0000unse/page/5 5]}}</ref> Unfortunately, Beauvoir's prominent open relationships at times overshadowed her substantial academic reputation. A scholar who was lecturing with her<ref>Beauvoir, ''The Prime of Life,'' p. 363.</ref> chastised their "distinguished [Harvard] audience [because] every question asked about Sartre concerned his work, while all those asked about Beauvoir concerned her personal life."<ref>Thurman, Judith. Introduction to ''The Second Sex'', 2009.</ref>

Sartre and Beauvoir always read each other's work. Debate continues about the extent to which they influenced each other in their existentialist works, such as Sartre's ''[[Being and Nothingness]]'' and Beauvoir's ''She Came to Stay'' and "Phenomenology and Intent".<ref>{{Cite book|last=Kirkpatrick|first=Kate|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1097366004|title=Becoming Beauvoir: A Life|date=22 August 2019|isbn=978-1-350-04717-4|location=London|publisher=Bloomsbury Academic|oclc=1097366004}}</ref> However, recent studies of Beauvoir's work focus on influences other than Sartre, including [[G. W. F. Hegel|Hegel]] and Leibniz.<ref name="SEP-Bergoffen-2010" /> The [[Neo-Hegelianism|Neo-Hegelian]] revival led by [[Alexandre Kojève]] and [[Jean Hyppolite]] in the 1930s inspired a whole generation of French thinkers, including Sartre, to discover Hegel's ''[[Phenomenology of Spirit]]''.<ref>Ursula Tidd, ''Simone de Beauvoir'', Psychology Press, p. 19.</ref><ref>Nancy Bauer, ''Simone de Beauvoir: Philosophy, and Feminism'', Columbia University Press, 2012, p. 86.</ref>  However, Beauvoir, reading Hegel in German during the war, produced an original critique of his dialectic of consciousness.

==== Allegations of sexual abuse ====
Beauvoir was [[Bisexuality|bisexual]], and her relationships with young women were controversial.<ref name="Lise1">{{cite book |author=Rodgers |title=Philosophers Behaving Badly |author2=Thompson |publisher=London: [[Peter Owen Publishers]] |year=2004 |isbn=072061368X |pages=186–187 |author-link1=Nigel Rodgers |author-link2=Mel Thompson (writer)}}</ref> French author [[Bianca Lamblin]] (originally Bianca Bienenfeld) wrote in her book ''Mémoires d'une jeune fille dérangée'' (Memoirs of a deranged girl, published in English under the title ''A Disgraceful Affair'') that, while a student at Lycée Molière, she was sexually exploited by her teacher Beauvoir, who was in her 30s.<ref>''Mémoires d'une jeune fille dérangée'' (1994, LGF – Livre de Poche; {{ISBN|978-2-253-13593-7}}/2006, Balland; {{ISBN|978-2-7158-0994-9}}).</ref> Sartre and Beauvoir both groomed and sexually abused Lamblin.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Riding |first1=Alan |date=14 April 1996 |title=The Odd Couple |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1996/04/14/books/the-odd-couple.html |access-date=9 November 2021 |website=New York Times |quote=Beauvoir duly seduced her and, the following year, introduced her to Sartre, then 33, who also took her to bed. By 1939, now studying under Sartre at the Sorbonne, Bianca was convinced that she was the key figure in an idealized love triangle.}}</ref> Bianca wrote her ''Mémoires'' in response to the posthumous 1990 publication of Jean-Paul Sartre's ''Lettres au Castor et à quelques autres: 1926-1963'' (Letters to Castor and other friends), in which she noted that she was referred to by the pseudonym Louise Védrine.<ref>{{Cite news |date=14 July 2023 |title=Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir: Bianca, leur jouet sexuel |language=fr |trans-title=Sartre, Beauvoir: Bianca, their sexual toy |work=[[Gala (magazine)|Gala]] |url=https://www.gala.fr/l_actu/news_de_stars/jean-paul-sartresimonedebeauvoirbiancaleurjouetsexuel_346146 |access-date=1 August 2023}}</ref>

In 1943, Beauvoir was suspended again from her teaching position when she was accused of seducing her 17-year-old lycée pupil [[Natalie Sorokin]]e in 1939.<ref>''Tête-à-tête: Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre'', Hazel Rowley, HarperCollins, 2005, pp. 130–135, {{ISBN|0-06-052059-0}}; {{ISBN|978-0-06-052059-5}}.</ref> Sorokine's parents laid formal charges against Beauvoir for debauching a minor (the age of consent in France at the time was 13 until 1945, when it became 15)<ref>{{Cite web |title=Légifrance - Publications officielles - Journal officiel - JORF n° 0155 du 03/07/1945 (accès protégé) |trans-title=Official publications - Official gazette (secure access) |url=https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/download/securePrint?token=82FDKZHeL@XiHAyZj@$ |access-date=29 July 2023 |language=fr}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=The Age(s) of Consent: Gay Activism and the Sexuality of Minors in France and Quebec (1970-1980) |url=https://www.cairn-int.info/load_pdf.php?ID_ARTICLE=E_CLIO1_042_0099&download=1 |access-date=29 July 2023}}</ref> and Beauvoir's licence to teach in France was revoked, although it was subsequently reinstated.<ref>''Intellectuals: From Marx and Tolstoy to Sartre and Chomsky'', Paul Johnson, Harper Perennial, 1988, pp. 238–38, {{ISBN|978-0-06-125317-1}}.</ref>

Beauvoir described in ''La Force de l'âge'' (''The Prime of Life'') a relationship of simple friendship with Nathalie Sorokine<ref>{{Cite book |last=de Beauvoir |first=Simone |title=La Force de l'âge |publisher=Gallimard |location=Paris |page=617 |language=fr |trans-title=The Prime of Life}}</ref> (in the book referred to as "Lise Oblanoff").<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Evans |first=Christine Anne |date=10 September 1995 |title="La Charmante Vermine": Simone de Beauvoir and the Women in Her Life |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/45186669 |journal=Simone de Beauvoir Studies |language=en |volume=12 |pages=26–32 |doi=10.1163/25897616-01201006 |jstor=45186669 |access-date=29 August 2023}}</ref> Sorokine, along with Bianca Lamblin and [[Olga Kosakiewicz]], later stated that their relationships with Beauvoir damaged them psychologically.<ref name="Lise1" />

=== Later years ===
[[File:Núñez-Beauvoir-Sartre-Che Guevara.jpg|thumb| [[Antonio Núñez Jiménez]], Beauvoir, [[Sartre]] and [[Che Guevara]] in Cuba, 1960.]]
[[File:President Nasser-Sagan-Sartre.jpg|thumb|[[Egypt|Egypt's]] President [[Gamal Abdel Nasser]], Beauvoir, [[Sartre]] and [[Claude Lanzmann]] in Cairo, 1967.]]

Beauvoir wrote popular travel diaries about time spent in the United States<ref>de Beauvoir, "America Day by Day", Carol Cosman (Translator) and Douglas Brinkley (Foreword), Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. {{ISBN|9780520210677}}.</ref> and China and published essays and fiction rigorously, especially throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Her 1955 travels in China were the basis of her 1957 travelogue ''The Long March'', in which she praised the efforts of the Chinese communists to [[Feminism in Chinese communism|emancipate women]].<ref name="Crean">{{Cite book |last=Crean |first=Jeffrey |title=The Fear of Chinese Power: an International History |date=2024 |publisher=[[Bloomsbury Academic]] |isbn=978-1-350-23394-2 |edition= |series=New Approaches to International History series |location=London, UK |pages=93}}</ref>

She published several volumes of short stories, including ''The Woman Destroyed'', which, like some of her other later work, deals with aging.
She lived with [[Claude Lanzmann]] from 1952 to 1959,<ref>{{cite news |author=Menand, Louis |date=26 September 2005 |title=Stand By Your Man |magazine=The New Yorker |publisher=Condé Nast |url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/09/26/stand-by-your-man |access-date=28 December 2017}}</ref> but perhaps her most famous lover was American author [[Nelson Algren]]. Beauvoir met Algren in Chicago in 1947, while she was on a four-month "exploration" trip of the United States using various means of transport: automobile, train, and [[Greyhound Lines|Greyhound]]. She kept a detailed diary of the trip, which was published in France in 1948 with the title ''America Day by Day''.<ref>Algren was her guide through the Chicago underworld, among drug addicts and petty thieves. {{Cite book |last=De Beauvoir |first=Simone |url=https://archive.org/details/americadaybyday0000beau |title=America Day by Day |date=1999 |publisher=University of California Press |isbn=9780520209794 |location=Berkeley |access-date=29 July 2023}}</ref> She wrote to him across the Atlantic as "my beloved husband."<ref>{{Cite news |last=Drew |first=Bettina |date=27 September 1998 |title=Simone de Beauvoir's Love Letters to Nelson Algren |work=Chicago Tribune |url=https://www.chicagotribune.com/1998/09/27/simone-de-beauvoirs-love-letters-to-nelson-algren/}}</ref> Algren won the National Book Award for ''[[The Man with the Golden Arm (novel)|The Man with the Golden Arm]]'' in 1950, and in 1954, Beauvoir won France's [[Prix Goncourt|most prestigious literary prize]] for ''[[The Mandarins]],'' in which Algren is the character Lewis Brogan. Algren vociferously objected to their intimacy becoming public. Years after they separated, she was buried wearing his gift of a silver ring.<ref>{{cite news |author=Le Bon-de Beauvoir, Sylvie |author-link=Sylvie Le Bon-de Beauvoir |year=1997 |title=Preface: A Transatlantic Love Affair |newspaper=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/books/first/d/debeauvoir-love.html |access-date=28 December 2017}}</ref>
[[File:Nelson Algren NYWTS.jpg|thumb|upright|alt=Waist high portrait of middle aged man reading|Algren in 1956]]

When Beauvoir visited Algren in Chicago, [[Art Shay]] took well-known nude and portrait photos of Beauvoir. Shay also wrote a play based on Algren, Beauvoir, and Sartre's triangular relationship. The play was stage read in 1999 in Chicago.

Beauvoir also wrote a four-volume autobiography, consisting of ''Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter'', ''The Prime of Life'', ''Force of Circumstance'' (sometimes published in two volumes in English translation: ''After the War'' and ''Hard Times''), and ''All Said and Done''.<ref name="iep.utm.edu" /> In 1964 Beauvoir published a novella-length autobiography, ''A Very Easy Death'', covering the time she spent visiting her aging mother, who was dying of cancer. The novella brings up questions of ethical concerns with truth-telling in doctor-patient relationships.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Willms |first=Janice |date=1997-12-18 |title=A Very Easy Death |url=http://medhum.med.nyu.edu/view/417 |access-date=2019-04-23 |website=NYU Langone Health}}</ref>

Her 1970 long essay [[La Vieillesse]] (''The Coming of Age'') is a rare instance of an intellectual meditation on the decline and solitude all humans experience if they do not die before about the age of 60.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Woodward |first=Kathleen |date=1993 |title=Simone de Beauvoir: Prospects for the Future of Older Women |journal=Generations |volume=17 |issue=2 |pages=23}}</ref>

In the 1970s Beauvoir became active in France's [[women's liberation movement]]. She wrote and signed the [[Manifesto of the 343]] in 1971, a manifesto that included a list of famous women who claimed to have had an abortion, then illegal in France. Signatories were diverse{{clarify|date=February 2019}} as [[Catherine Deneuve]], [[Delphine Seyrig]], and Beauvoir's sister Hélène. In 1974, abortion was legalized in France.

When asked in a 1975 interview with [[Betty Friedan]] if she would support a minimum wage for women who do housework, Beauvoir answered: "No, we don’t believe that any woman should have this choice. No woman should be authorized to stay at home and raise her children. Society should be different. Women should not have that choice, precisely because if there is such a choice, too many women will make that one. It is a way of forcing women in a certain direction", further stating that motherhood "should be a choice, and not a result of conditioning”.<ref>"Sex, Society, and the Female Dilemma". Interview with Betty Friedan, ''The Saturday Review'' (pp. 12-21), June 14, 1975.</ref><ref>Betty Friedan, 1998, “It changed my life: Writings on the woman’s movement”, p. 397-398. ISBN 9780674468856</ref>

In about 1976, Beauvoir and [[Sylvie Le Bon-de Beauvoir|Sylvie Le Bon]] made a trip to New York City in the United States to visit [[Kate Millett]] on her farm.<ref>Appignanesi 2005, p. 160.</ref>{{clarify|date=February 2019|reason=what makes this noteworthy?}}

In 1977, Beauvoir signed a [[French petition against age of consent laws|petition]] along with other French intellectuals that supported the freeing of three arrested [[paedophile]]s.<ref name="Krizman">"''Sexual Morality and the Law''", Chapter 16 of ''Politics, Philosophy, Culture: Interviews and Other Writings 1977-1984''. Edited by Lawrence D. Krizman. New York/London: 1990, Routledge, {{ISBN|0-415-90149-9}}, p. 275.</ref><ref name="Henley">{{cite news |author=Henley, Jon |date=23 February 2001 |title=Calls for legal child sex rebound on luminaries of May 68 |newspaper=The Guardian |url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/feb/24/jonhenley |access-date=28 December 2017}}</ref> The petition  explicitly addresses the 'Affaire de Versailles', where three adult men, Dejager (age 45), Gallien (age 43), and Burckhardt (age 39) had sexual relations with minors of both sexes aged 12–13.<ref>{{cite news |date=26 January 1977 |title=À Propos d'un Procès |newspaper=Le Monde.fr |url=https://www.lemonde.fr/archives/article/1977/01/26/a-propos-d-un-proces_2854399_1819218.html}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|title=Matzneff : les signataires d'une pétition pro-pédophilie de 1977 ont-ils émis des regrets ?|url=https://www.liberation.fr/checknews/2020/01/02/matzneff-les-signataires-d-une-petition-pro-pedophilie-de-1977-ont-ils-emis-des-regrets_1771174/|date=January 2, 2020|language=French|author=Andraca, Robin|newspaper=[[Libération]]}}</ref>

''[[When Things of the Spirit Come First]]'', a set of short stories Beauvoir had written decades previously but had not considered worth publishing, was released in 1980.<ref name="iep.utm.edu" />
[[File:Sartre+Beauvoir grave.JPG|right|thumb|Beauvoir's and Sartre's grave at the [[Cimetière du Montparnasse]].]]

In 1981 she wrote ''La Cérémonie des adieux'' (''A Farewell to Sartre''), a painful account of Sartre's last years. In the opening of ''Adieux'', Beauvoir notes that it is the only major published work of hers which Sartre did not read before its publication.{{cn|date=February 2024}}|

She contributed the piece "Feminism - Alive, Well, and in Constant Danger" to the 1984 anthology ''[[Sisterhood Is Global: The International Women's Movement Anthology]]'', edited by [[Robin Morgan]].<ref name="global">{{cite web |title=Table of Contents: Sisterhood is global |url=https://catalog.vsc.edu/lscfind/Record/154795/TOC#tabnav |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151208065459/https://catalog.vsc.edu/lscfind/Record/154795/TOC#tabnav |archive-date=8 December 2015 |access-date=2015-10-15 |publisher=Catalog.vsc.edu}}</ref>

After Sartre died in 1980, Beauvoir published his letters to her with edits to spare the feelings of people in their circle who were still living. After Beauvoir's death, Sartre's adopted daughter and literary heir [[Arlette Elkaïm-Sartre|Arlette Elkaïm]] would not let many of Sartre's letters be published in unedited form. Most of Sartre's letters available today have Beauvoir's edits, which include a few omissions but mostly the use of pseudonyms. Beauvoir's adopted daughter and literary heir [[Sylvie Le Bon-de Beauvoir|Sylvie Le Bon]], unlike Elkaïm, published Beauvoir's unedited letters to both Sartre and Algren.

==== Sylvie Le Bon-de Beauvoir ====
[[Sylvie Le Bon-de Beauvoir]] and Simone de Beauvoir met in the 1960s, when Beauvoir was in her fifties and Sylvie was a teenager. In 1980, Beauvoir, 72, legally adopted Sylvie, who was in her late thirties, by which point they had already been in an intimate relationship for decades. Although Beauvoir rejected the institution of marriage her entire life, this adoption was like a marriage for her. Some scholars argue that this adoption was not to secure a literary heir for Beauvoir, but as a form of resistance to the bio-heteronormative family unit.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Latchford |first=Frances J. |date=2020 |title=Heterodox Love and the Girl Maverick: Simone de Beauvoir, Sylvie le Bon, and Their Confounding Family Romance |url=https://muse.jhu.edu/article/782290 |journal=Adoption & Culture |language=en |volume=8 |issue=2 |pages=194–209 |doi=10.1353/ado.2020.0009 |s2cid=232040473 |issn=2574-2523}}</ref>

==== Death ====
Beauvoir died of [[pneumonia]] on 14 April 1986 in Paris, aged 78.<ref>{{cite web |title=Encyclopędia Britannica's Guide to Women's History |url=http://www.britannica.com/women/article-9014010 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111213135908/http://www.britannica.com/women/article-9014010 |archive-date=13 December 2011 |access-date=2012-07-16}}</ref> She is buried next to Sartre at the [[Montparnasse Cemetery]] in Paris.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Traub |first=Courtney |date=2019-05-22 |title=Montparnasse Cemetery in Paris: Walking Paths & Famous Graves |url=https://www.parisunlocked.com/best-of-paris/parks-and-gardens/a-stroll-through-montparnasse-cemetery-in-paris/ |access-date=2021-01-02 |website=Paris Unlocked |language=en-US}}</ref> She was honored as a figure at the forefront of the struggle for women's rights around the time of her passing.<ref name="Bergoffen">{{Cite journal |last=Bergoffen |first=Debra |date=2018-07-10 |editor1-last=Zahavi |editor1-first=Dan |title=Simone de Beauvoir |url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198755340.013.21 |journal=Oxford Handbooks Online |doi=10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198755340.013.21}}</ref>