A review by madsmacmath
The Woman Destroyed by Simone de Beauvoir

dark reflective sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Everyone else is right: the third story is the best and reads like a novella. It also helps to go into it with a sense of Simone’s feminist existentialism and the knowledge that the second story is meant to be read stream-of-consciousness, as a monologue.

You hate each of the women at first. They seem stupid and one-dimensional. Who wraps their whole life around these men, their husbands and sons? And somewhere in each of the stories, it dawns on you: it’s you - or your friend, or your aunt, or your mother. 

No one thinks they’ll be the woman destroyed until they already are.