'The Image of Her'

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A new edition of Simone de Beauvoir’s The Image of Her has recently been published, translated by the amazing Lauren Elkin. It features issues around the changing lives of women in 1960s France, as well as the falsities and edifice of bourgeois life, and the ways in which our children or the younger generation of women can lead us to remember our past selves.

What I found striking was the distinctly modern feel of the book.

On a recent Backlisted podcast, Elkin speaks to how, if Beauvoir’s earlier discussions and thoughts had been on class and society, and the need for a more equitable working landscape, The Image of Her moves Beauvoir’s thoughts and ideas forward.

By the 1960s, though the workplace had begun to include women, Beauvoir’s novel examines how this move towards equality had still left an imbalance. Women were still the managers on the domestic front as the main care givers, and there was still a general sense of disillusionment with their lives. These are themes she had begun exploring in The Second Sex, the seminal feminist text in which she argued that men fundamentally oppressed women, seeing them as ‘Other.’

In The Image of Her, Laurence acts as the cipher for Beauvoir’s ideas. Her bourgeois Paris existence features all the trappings of the perfect life. She spends weekends at in the country, her weekdays in a Paris apartment with her husband, Jean-Charles, and two young daughters, Catherine and Louise. She has money, a career as an advertising copywriter, even an attentive male lover.

But something is undefinably missing from Laurence’s life. All her life, she has strived to meet the expectations of others, including her ambitious and single-minded mother, Dominique. Her father, discarded by her mother as being too unambitious, is the only constant with which Laurence shares an affinity. A single-minded intellectual, she longs to spend more time with him, discussing ideas and art and his fascinating thoughts. Later in the novel, when he suggests a trip together to Greece, she jumps at the opportunity to finally better know this solitary character, only to encounter further disillusionment.

It is only when her ten-year-old daughter Catherine begins to express her despair around the unfairness of the world that Laurence begins to question a life that prizes image over truth.

Catherine has begun crying in the night and struggling to sleep. This is causing Laurence distress, though her other family members don’t seem to be taking it too seriously. It becomes evident however through the narration that Laurence herself had struggled with a period of depression five years ago, where she had been assured that ‘many young women experience this kind of crisis.’ Her mother Dominique had suggested she should get out of the house and work, and Laurence reflects that her husband:

‘...was very enthusiastic about it when he saw how much money I made. Now there’s no longer any reason to fall apart.’

But there is a sense that Laurence is close to falling apart, even as she attempts to convince herself that she has a happy life. She has found herself to be an accomplished advertising copywriter, but is disillusioned, thinking about Catherine and domestic matters while she is at work, and working when she is at home. Her feelings towards her mother waver between ambivalence and empathy, particularly as her mother enters a personal crisis.

‘— I’ve already told you, a woman without a man is déclassée – she’s come down in the world. She has no place.’

Laurence reflects on her lack of ability to enjoy literature as she used to, and her willingness to avoid the news, which has depressed her ever since the stories of the horrors of WWII have emerged.

Recounting her former literary pursuits, Laurence reflects:

‘That she should have regressed in the early years of her marriage is unsurprising. Classic. Love, motherhood, it’s a violent emotional shock, when you marry quite young, and she could never find a balance between intelligence and affection. It seemed as if I no longer had a future. Jean-Charles did, and the girls, but not me. So what was the point of cultivating my mind.’

As can be seen in the above passage, the novel is written in an interesting and, at times, slightly disorienting style. The narrative though always focalised through Laurence, moves between third- and first person, sometimes in one paragraph. Beauvoir’s style also does not provide traditional speech marks or indications of who is speaking. Although I personally enjoy this kind of prose writing, I did find the first few pages a little disorientating, as there were quite a few characters present, and I found it difficult to place who they all were in relevance to one another. However, this soon settled into a rhythm.

Laurence goes on to express feelings of dispossession over her own self and a distinct ability to form her own opinions. She is angered when she realises Jean-Charles disapproves of what he views as Catherine’s sensitive nature. Laurence recognises this as a trait her daughter has picked up from herself, and something which she has felt forced to subdue.

When Catherine makes friends with a clever and politically more engaged, motherless Jewish girl, Brigitte, Laurence is torn between concern over her influences on her daughter’s access to the troubles of the world, and Brigitte’s need for mothering. She also baulks at the idea of curtailing a friendship which has come to mean so much to her daughter. There is definitely a sense of difference on the part of her husband and others towards the young Jewish girl and the bourgeois milieu in which the other characters dwell.

Some of the negative ideas around women in the book are surprising, but relevant to Beauvoir’s picture of the bourgeoisie nature of most of the characters. Dominique, a success in the radio business, discusses another woman in the garden of the country home she shares with her wealthy partner Gilbert Mortier. Laurence overhears her mother’s opinion that the other woman has only become successful due to her husband’s money:

‘— she’s not very bright, if she has a career it’s thanks to her husband, but in any case, when you’re one of the most high-profile women in Paris, you don’t behave like a simpering little shop girl!’

Laurence observes how, in another almost identical garden, there will likely be someone discussing her mother in the same way. And yet, as Laurence reflects, this will be an unfair assumption of another woman on her mother’s behalf. Dominique has been in the radio business since 1945, and had to force her way in, working:

‘...like a dog, trampling right over anyone who got in her way.’

Laurence wonders:

‘Why did they take such pleasure in tearing each other to pieces?’

There is a performative element that comes through the novel from the beginning, embellished further by Laurence’s work as an advertising copywriter.

In the Backlisted podcast, Elkin amusingly refers to the job of translating the ironic advertising ‘speak’ of the novel into English from the original French. Beauvoir, it appears, is having fun with this further element of performative language in order to sell an ideal lifestyle to consumers. This brings a modern feel to the novel: there can become a performative element to sharing our passions online, striking a fine balance between connection and the increasing need to ‘perform’ our interests, hobbies, or intellect, for the sake of doing so. Reading Beauvoir’s thoughts on this back in the 1960s, makes us question ideas around performance and authenticity prevalent in our current culture.

An interesting element of the story comes when Laurence and Jean-Charles go Christmas shopping in Paris.

Laurence is determined to making it an enjoyable outing with her husband, yet finds herself unable to avoid seeing the advertising copy behind the items on sale in the shop windows. As someone whose occupation involves ‘selling’ these ideal lifestyles to other consumers, she understands that we are buying into the idea, rather than the item itself. Again, this felt surprisingly relevant to influencer culture and the idea of buying a product in order to achieve a certain aesthetic, which inevitably leads to disappointment.

‘...that’s what we’re really after, whenever we covet any of the things displayed in it, it’s always the whole display we want.’

Laurence instead considers that she wishes to give her daughter:

‘...security, happiness, the joy of being alive.’

This sense of capitalism and artifice feels incredibly modern on the part of Beauvoir.

Jean-Charles adds to his wife’s thoughts on this when he insists on wishing to spoil her with an extravagant gift. This comes after they have argued about their daughter, and following an incident where she and Jean-Charles have endured a car accident in which she narrowly avoids a cyclist. Jean-Charles is continually referring to the cost she has caused them to the car repairs, unable to accept that the young man’s life was worth saving, further adding to Beauvoir’s examination of the morality and falsity of bourgeois society.

Yet, Jean-Charles is not necessarily a ‘bad’ character; the book doesn’t appear to apportion blame, and neither does Laurence. There are a lot of thoughts around marriage and relationships, and Laurence appears resigned to the fact that once marriage and children have been undertaken, ‘There’s no way out.’ It is more a sense that Laurence, formally resigned to accepting the status quo, has begun to see something of her younger self in the awakening despair of her young daughter Catherine.

‘It’s terrifying to think we can influence our children merely by being who we are.’

When it is suggested they seek the guidance of a psychotherapist for Catherine, Laurence is spurred into action to protect her. It is as though she sees in her daughter herself and the future outcome for Catherine if she, her mother, does not respond to her own feelings of unease.

‘This time it’s different. It’s about Catherine. If she failed her she would never forgive herself.’

Laurence pertinently questions the very nature of mothering and how to avoid the negative influences we may inadvertently be conveying through our actions and gestures:

‘...all these things that ought to disappear behind me linger on and become a part of this child, who thinks about everything, and who will remember, just as I remember certain inflections in Dominique’s voice. It seems unfair. We can’t take responsibility for every last thing we do - or don’t do.’

There is also an element of the increasing encroachment of modernity in the novel. Jean-Charles is pro-change and technology, whilst some of the other characters appear more guarded. Again, this hits a modern, emotional relevance to current world-views, with the divides around the use of AI and other technologies.

The novel is Beauvoir at her finest, examining the truths of womanhood and its oppressors and the parent/child relationship. In it, we see Laurence as she strives to understand the parameters of the image-driven life in which she lives.

The ending feels like Beauvoir’s recognition of the truth for the lives of women like Laurence, as well as a premonition for the future women of her daughters’ generation.

An interesting novel that has lingered in my consciousness, raising questions I find difficult to answer, for days after turning the last page.