Editing Simone de Beauvoir (section)

=== 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>