The Woman Destroyed (Harper Perennial Modern Classics)
About this ebook
THE WOMAN DESTROYED is a collection of three stories, each an exquisite and passionate study of a woman trapped by circumstances, trying to rebuild her life.
In the first story, ‘The Age of Discretion’, a successful scholar fast approaching middle age faces a double shock – her son’s abandonment of the career she has chosen for him and the harsh critical rejection of her latest academic work. ‘The Monologue’ is an extraordinary New Year’s Eve outpouring of invective from a woman consumed with bitterness and loneliness after her son and her husband have left home. Finally, in ‘The Woman Destroyed’, Simone de Beauvoir tells the story of Monique, trying desperately to resurrect her life after her husband confesses to an affair with a younger woman.
Compassionate, lucid, full of wit and knowing, Simone de Beauvoir’s rare insight into the inequalities and complexities of women’s lives is unsurpassable.
Ratings and reviews
About the author
Simon de Beauvoir was born in Paris in 1908. A close friend of the writer and philosopher Jean-Paul Satre, and well-known as a leader of the Existentialist movement in Paris, her novels have won wide acclaim throughout the world. Her famous work, The Second Sex, was hailed as a landmark study of women, and her novels, including The Woman Destroyed and She Came to Stay, have become well-loved classics. She died in 1968.
