A review by ranam
The Woman Destroyed by Simone de Beauvoir

dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No

3.5

This book has three sections.  The first,  age of discretion,  was the least memorable one. It is about a woman writer struggling with her career at the end of her days. Like all three stories in this book a major theme is a mother at odds with her child's career choice or marriage choice. She brings him or her up to be something they're just not.  The mothers just want to prove to themselves that they are good ones. In the monologue, characterized by long ranting with no punctuation, a woman grieves for her daughter after she takes her own life. She attempts to defend herself as others blame her for it.  Everything she did was for her children.  She remarried and had so much love for her and her baby son that she becomes a mentally ill recluse that hates everything about  her existence. Another theme is faithfulness in a marriage: adultery and divorce.  In the last short story,  the  saddest and most perturbing one, Du Beauvoir depicts a woman's descent into madness as she tries to come to terms with the unfaithfulness of her husband who falls for a younger woman. As the inevitable takes its course she only has one choice but she can't let go. He no longer wants her and he can't juggle two relationships at once. Her disintegration  reaches a climax and then sharply reaches a denouement: what does she have after everything she has worked for is gone?