Sex, Love, and Letters: Writing Simone de Beauvoir

Historian Coffin (The Politics of Women’s Work) offers a fine study of reader responses to Simone de Beauvoir’s work. Drawing on the pioneering French feminist’s extensive archive of reader mail, supplemented with book reviews, Coffin proceeds chronologically through Beauvoir’s publication history, starting with 1949’s classic The Second Sex. Coffin is particularly adept at articulating connections to the legacy of WWII. Some are straightforward, such as how Beauvoir invoked Nazi atrocities in decrying French torture of Algerian militants. Others are less so—Coffin proposes The Second Sex’s frank discussions of female sexuality offended readers and critics preoccupied with public rectitude after the ignominy of the country’s wartime defeat and occupation. Coffin does not shy away from Beauvoir’s flaws, such as a tendency toward self-absorption, which she suggests significantly flawed the author’s 1962 memoir of pro-Algerian activism, The Force of Circumstance. On the whole, however, Beauvoir emerges as a valuable figure in her readers’ lives; during the 1960s and early ’70s, Coffin finds, she received an influx of letters seeking her advice about the still-illegal practice of abortion. Coffin’s well-researched survey opens up a new perspective onto a major writer, and makes a convincing case for her continuing intellectual relevance. (Sept.)