In this first novel by famed French author Simone de Beauvoir (1908–86), a theater couple, Françoise and Pierre, decide to sponsor the intellectual growth of a young woman from Rouen, and they pay for her to live in Paris, one floor down from them in the Hotel Bayard. The young woman, Xavière, has had little exposure to the world and Françoise persuades her husband that the two of them must make sure Xavière’s life and intelligence are not wasted on the domesticity and conventionalism that would devour her if she returned to Rouen. Furthermore, Françoise aspires to make Xavière happy.
She Came to Stay was written during World War II. The relationships strongly suggest existential themes. Although purportedly fictional, She Came to Stay was based largely on de Beauvoir’s own relationship with Jean-Paul Sartre and Olga Kosakiewicz, a former student who came to stay with them in occupied Paris during the war. The young student’s presence produced many difficulties in the relationship between de Beauvoir and Sartre. In the fictional world Françoise’s quest proves difficult from the very beginning. Xavière displays a neurosis and a controlling nature that stifl her potential for doing anything productive, and these manifestations also make her personal affairs volatile, uncertain, and strange. Her attention constantly returns to her slightly hedonistic theories of life, which contradict action and organization to a frightening degree. She insinuates that Pierre and Françoise’s life in the theater and devotion to each other are only methods of self-enslavement. She nevertheless fascinates the couple and they are determined to bring her out into the world and to enrich her life.
Initially, Xavière seems averse to forming a bond with Pierre, because she is so jealous for Françoise’s attention and so put off by Pierre’s busy life in the theater. Françoise and Pierre assign themselves the great task of unearthing Xavière from her den of neuroses, her hotel room, and encouraging her to take an interest in something besides her immediate personal comfort. Pierre even provides her with private acting lessons, which she abandons as soon as she can convince him to agree. She joins them in eating, drinking, and visiting others, but in every conversation she seems determined to destroy theoretically the meaning that underscores their lives and the principles that govern their smallest actions, while not offering any kind of solution. She rails against anything that is scheduled or becomes a practice, claiming that the act of feeling in the present moment should reign above all else. Although Françoise and Pierre think they are sculpting Xavière and nurturing her potential, it is actually she who is sculpting them, and quite recklessly.
She Came to Stay is the story of a man and woman attempting to incorporate a foreign invasion into their love life. Xavière will not consent to be merely their little friend or pupil gleaning only influence and connections; she seems to want to control them entirely. Simultaneously, Pierre develops a passion for her, or for combating her stubborn philosophical stance, and he makes a decision to possess her, almost as a lover, within a trio made up of himself, Françoise, and Xavière. Pierre plans for the “perfection” of the trio, as though it is a proven workable mode of living, not merely an experiment. All three stand in denial of the emotional danger they create for themselves and each other, although Françoise feels before any of them Xavière’s jealousy, which will destroy their unity. Xavière’s unbearable vanity and exclusionary pride make relationships impossible, and Pierre poignantly accuses her of letting herself feel things only “in the dark and in secret.”
After the agreement among the three, the official formation of the trio, and the commencement of the great facade of happiness, Elizabeth, a friend, receives them as guests and finds them “hilarious,” together, in “a perfectly symmetrical triangle” and “almost drunk.” This state hardly lasts. Xavière cannot wait through Françoise’s and Pierre’s “grown-up” conversations on politics and she does not share the overly generous nature of the couple at all. She soon begins to limit the exchanges Françoise and Pierre may have with each other, controlling them with her temper and moods. Françoise is as much in love with Xavière as Pierre is, although she is more aware of the fact that her identity experiences an entrapment, enslavement, and a choking to death by Xavière’s jealousy. Both husband and wife speak of their relationship with the young woman as though it is of the utmost importance, even though it seems to threaten their involvement with society and their devotion to each other and to the theater. Pierre allows himself to be driven mad by his jealousy when Xavière takes up a relationship with one of his lead actors, Gerbert.
Xavière in many ways seems to be a sadistic and uncultivated inversion of Françoise—despising almost everyone and everything except Pierre and Françoise, and even them at times. Françoise eventually feels herself “erased” by Xavière’s existence as though in loving Xavière she willingly sacrifices her identity to suit the moods of the younger woman. In one instance Françoise thinks of the actor Gerbert as Xavière’s “prey” and not long afterward absolves her of blame and thinks of herself as Xavière’s predator causing Xavière to be the “prey.” She and Pierre become aware at least that because Xavière can’t have Pierre solely, she rejects him and, by association, rejects Françoise, who is vulnerable to sharing Pierre’s anguish.
In one light Xavière attaches herself to and attempts to destroy first Françoise and then Pierre. From another perspective the couple invites Xavière into an impossible situation and persists with their placement of her in a failing utopian scenario. Françoise feels “resigned to fate,” as though having become an unintentional mother restoring peace between a hotheaded father and daughter. At times Françoise wants to have Pierre again all to herself, but she cannot attempt to help them reconcile and simultaneously feels as though she has ruined Xavière’s life, and that Pierre has been taken in by “so wretched a love.” What can be called an obsession with Xavière’s “smell of ether,” “woebegone looks,” and “haughty indifference” leads to destruction and psychological torment of the gravest degree. Françoise reveals to Gerbert about herself and Xavière, “We’ve never been so intimate . . . And I’m sure she’s never hated me more.” They continue to compete over Pierre and finally Gerbert and, under Françoise’s watch, Xavière eventually changes from an “arrogant heroine” into a “poor, hunted victim.”
In She Came to Stay Beauvoir presents idealistic characters who blur the divide between art and life. Before Xavière, Françoise and Pierre lived to create art and enjoy life. When Xavière comes to stay her cantankerous personality and unwillingness to enjoy life alter Françoise and Pierre, so that they begin to neglect their art and create their lives, as though living is an art or a political act. This practice fails them, causing chaos, grief, useless analysis, insincerity, and violence. Throughout the novel Beauvoir seems to articulate a wise caution against utopianism, idealism, and hyper-analysis. Xavière might have been a suitable companion for Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray, that is, until they murdered each other. Like Gray, she appears to be almost a symbol for some sort of hyper-aware critical theory that, before dissolving itself, temporarily freezes progress, life, art, and happy existence.
Françoise’s relationship with Xavière provides a lens for some of Beauvoir’s feminist beliefs. Françoise attempts to cultivate Xavière and fails because Xavière is a different sort of female altogether; she is in many ways an all-devouring void into which Françoise falls and out of which she must navigate, if she is ever to reassume her identity as a secure, connected, and complete woman.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bair, Deirdre. Simone de Beauvoir. New York: Summit Books, 1990.
Beauvoir, Simone de. Adieux: A Farewell to Sartre. Translated by Patrick O’Brian. New York: Pantheon Books, 1984.
Crosland, Margaret. Simone de Beauvoir: The Woman and Her Work. London: Heinemann, 1992.
Evans, Mary. Simone de Beauvoir. Thousand Oaks, Calif., and London: Sage, 1996.
Fullbrook, Kate, and Edward Fullbrook. Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993.
Grosholz, Emily R. The Legacy of Simone de Beauvoir. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004.
Johnson, Christopher. Thinking in Dialogue. Nottingham, U.K.: University of Nottingham Press, 2003.
Okley, Judith. Simone de Beauvoir: A Re-Reading. London: Virago Press, 1986.
Simons, Margaret A. Beauvoir and the Second Sex: Feminism, Race, and the Origin of Existentialism. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999.
Tidd, Ursula. Simone de Beauvoir, Gender and Testimony. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
Categories: French Literature, Literature, Novel Analysis
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