De Beauvoir is one of the major French authors and ‘Big thinkers’ of the mid-late 20th century. Une morte tres douce is her little-known real-life masterpiece of the closing six weeks of her mother's life, following a fall at the mother’s Paris apartment. Despite their lengthy cold, fraught relationship, this personal, lived-experience narrative has moving scenes and reflections about the demise of a close loved one. This marvellously readable work covers personal and existential themes, that resonate for those of us who have had active care responsibilities for our elderly parents. Simone confronts her anguish at the ‘nothingness’ of death with the non-existence of a God!
- Une morte tres douce (A Very Easy Death), 1964, Pantheon NY, ISBN 0394728998
- Memoir of a Dutiful Daughter, 2005, ISBN 978006082519
- What is Existentialism?, 2020, Penguin Random House, ISBN 9780241475232
- Simone’s engaging writing style in the book – with components of narrative clarity, astounding detail, personal emotional turmoil with philosophical reflection,
- Themes – their cold mother-daughter relationship, Simone’s compromised ethics as her mother’s daughter-carer, and the capacity for a dying person to exercise existential freedom in an agedcare hostel,
- Writing exercises to critique, contrast and discuss selected paragraphs
By the end of this course, students should be able to:
- Come to their own view about this forgotten masterpiece by Simone de Beauvoir on the universal human experience.
- Agree or disagree with her partner Jean-Paul Sartre, that by simple style and astounding descriptions of the minutiae of her mother’s daily physical decline, nursing home living and passing on – this is Simone’s masterpiece relating to the universal inevitability of our human condition.
- Recognise, as Simone clearly stated, that her body-of-writings goes beyond the trail-blazing best-seller The Second Sex.
