She Came to Stay

by Simone de Beauvoir

Book Overview

This 1943 novel is about the deterioration of the relationship of a young couple who invite a young girl to stay with them for a prolonged visit. The novel's philosophical underpinning is de Beauvoir's idea that one's individual conscience is compromised by the existence of the consciences of others. ? Set in Paris on the eve of World War II and sizzling with love, anger, and revenge, She Came to Stay explores the changes wrought in the soul of a...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393306461
• ISBN13: 9780393306460
• Release Date: January 1990
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 404 Pages
• Weight: 0.92 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.5" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Great Read

Book about pretentious Parisian snobs which somehow works out to be a most enjoyable and engaging read! Highly recommend. Loved the ending.

So Real!

This book made me sad, happy, angry, interested...pretty much everything. I was going from ''kick her out'' to ''kick him out'', to ''get real'' even if aware of existentialist ideas behind it and what I am 'supposed' to think about it. A great read even if some were disappointed by De Beauvoir for preaching one thing an living the other. Hey, we are all just human and this book is so honest it is almost painful!

Intense love, hate, jealousy, despair, revenge!

Based on the real life trio of Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sarte, and Olga Kosakievicz--a student of de Beauvoir, She Came To Stay is a tale of the complications that arise when a young, precocious woman is brought into a long-standing, deep, and intellectual relationship between two older, "open" lovers. "Open" meaning that they were ideally free to love and have affairs with others. This novel brims with emotions vacillating from love to hate, jealousy to despair, self-controlled calmness to revenge! De Beauvoir gets inside her characters' thoughts and feelings with an intensity reminiscent of novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky. The character of Xaviere stands out as the ultimate manipulative, volatile, and self-centered, young woman who doesn't care or think about the consequences of her actions and words upon others, and who also elicts the best and worst emotions out of everyone around her: "Impulsively, she took Francoise's face between her hands and began to kiss her with fanatical devotion. They were sacred kisses, purifying Xaviere for all her defilement and restoring her self-respect. With these soft lips on her face, Francoise felt so noble, so ethereal, so sublime, that it sickened her heart; she longed for a human friendship, and not this fanatical and imperious worship of which she was forced to be the docile idol." (pg. 318) My favorite character is Francoise, who valiantly struggles with her internal battles of reason, love, suspicion, and jealousy throughout the novel. She spends most of the novel trying so hard to be civil and responsible toward Xaviere, but then you find a refreshing turn in her change of heart: "She drank a little wine. Her palms were moist. She had always made a point of disregarding her own dreams and desires, but this self-effacing wisdom now revolted her. Why didn't she make up her mind to go after what she wanted?" (pg. 360) The ending surprised me, even though I had read from other reviews that Xaviere's demise would happen...I just didn't know HOW it would happen! She Came to Stay is an engaging, emotional, rollercoaster of a ride tempered with some reason. Read it and discover how one woman finally decided she had had enough!

Existential relationships are never easy.

Relationships are never easy, even for intellectuals like Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre. Set in pre-World War II Paris, de Beauvoir's first novel, SHE CAME TO STAY (1954) provides a fictional portrait of her unconventional relationship with her lifelong partner, Sartre, and her protege, Bianca Bienenfeld. Their menage a trois began in 1938, when de Beauvoir introduced Bienenfeld (aka Bianca Lamblin) to her partner/lover, Sartre, who was thirty-three, and ended in 1940 when, at de Beauvoir's encouragement, Sartre abandoned Lamblin on the eve of WWII. Although SHE CAME TO STAY may be read as a love story examining the complex dilemmas posed by love (demonstrating existential relationships are perhaps easier in theory than in reality) and the destructive powers of relationships, it also succeeds on a more philosphical level. SHE CAME TO STAY tells the story of Francoise, her lover, Pierre, and Xaviere, an emotionally unstable young woman from Rouen who comes between them. The novel demonstrates that a relationship can lead not only to ecstasy, but also to a personal, life-changing crisis. The romantic threesome de Beauvoir creates for Francoise sears her protagonist "like a sharp burn" (p. 207). Francoise becomes angry, insanely jealous, and then disillusioned with her dream of "one life, one work, one love" (p. 233) with Pierre. Eventually, her relationship leads her to experience life without meaning: an existential "abyss of nothingness" (p. 291). "It was like death," de Beauvior writes, "a total negation, an eternal absence . . . the entire universe was was engulfed in it, and Francoise, forever excluded from the world, was herself dissolved in this void" (p. 291). By the end of the novel, Xaviere is destroyed by an act of revenge, and Francoise is alone and estranged from Pierre. While SHE CAME TO STAY may not measure up to the writing standards de Beauvoir later set with THE MANDARINS and THE SECOND SEX, it is nevertheless a powerful novel. Readers interested in reading more about de Beauvoir's real-life triangle with Sartre and Lamblin may consider reading Lamblin's memoir, A DISGRACEFUL AFFAIR, in which Lamblin offers her first-hand account of her unconventional relationship with the two French existentialists. G. Merritt

A Proud Emotional Creature

Francoise and Pierre Labrousse are a couple. Xaviere is a student from Rouen. Xaviere's real life has yet to begin. Pierre suggests that perhaps he and Francoise can help Xaviere manage to live in Paris. When Xaviere comes to live in the same hotel as Francoise, she spends much of her time alone in her room. After the rehearsal of Pierre's play, Pierre and Francoise go to a bar by habit. When Pierre becomes interested in a person he is able to carry on a conversation for hours with angelic ferocity. This is part of his generosity. Francoise persuades Xaviere to accompany her to the bar. An example of Xaviere's thinking is Xaviere holds that concerts are a ridiculous convention since it is silly to arrange to hear music at a certain time. Pierre speaks of his confounded mania for making a conquest. While Pierre is acting Francoise is able to work on her novel. After Xaviere moves to Paris Francoise finds that she has little free time. At a party Francoise and Pierre's sister Elisabeth view the actresses as having an embalmed youth to their appearances. Francoise believes that the life of Pierre and hers that is perfect as to form is beginning to lose its substance. She becomes ill and has to move to a nursing home for care. The night of the New Year's Eve party Pierre had offered to give up Xaviere and now it seems to Francoise that Xaviere and Pierre are in love. When Francoise and Pierre are in the presence of Xaviere she becomes upset because she, Xaviere, feels her feelings are being dissected. Since Pierre and Francoise are supposed to have a perfect love, she, Francoise, becomes annoyed when Pierre and Xaviere bring their love to her attention. Francoise endeavors to focus on everyone as part of a trio. Elisabeth thinks that Xaviere is a sly fickle girl. Francoise comes to the realization that watching Xaviere so closely is squalid. Both Pierre and Francoise seek to influence Xaviere and she suffers from their attention. In the end Francoise chooses to be alone, Pierre is in the service, (it is 1940 or so and the war is going on), and Xaviere is estranged. (Alternatively Francoise and Xaviere end up dead.) This is the novel, I have read, in which the author worked out her ideas about freedom, existentialism, and in turn transmitted them to Jean Paul Sartre for philosophical exposition. I have also read that situations such as the one described here gave rise to ethical complaints from parents causing De Beauvoir to lose her license to teach. The book has always been too schematic for my tastes as fiction qua fiction, but one cannot help being intrigued by the historical notoriety of the book.