Henry de Montherlant’s Les Jeunes Filles and Simone de Beauvoir’s L’Invitée - Part 3
The final part of the article. The next three posts will be on aspects of art history - Mayan Art, Dada and Joseph Beuys.
3. Similarities and Differences
It is illuminating to compare the difference and similarities of The Girls and She Came to Stay. Both are works of fiction that follow similar narrative conventions and structures. The two novels share the same period and setting, literary Paris in the thirties. The female characters in both novels display obsessive traits in their male relationships. There is little to distinguish Xavière and Solange in their naivety, dependence and emotional immaturity in their respective relationship with Costals and Labrousse. Françoise in her obsessive desire to sustain her idealist relationship with Labrousse resembles Andrée in her dogged pursuit of Costals. Elisabeth in maintaining her relationship with Claude resembles Solange’s persistence with Costals, despite his openly avowed and resolute abhorrence of the institution of marriage.[1] Pierre Costals and Pierre Labrousse display common traits in their attitudes and treatment of women. Labrousse is cynical and ruthless in his dealings with Xavière, applying double standards to his multiple affairs (22) and her single affair with Gerbert. While he treats Françoise with greater respect, his esteem seems more intellectual than sexual.[2] As Beauvoir identified, Costals’ misogynism is pervasive, notably in his treatment of Andrée and Solange.
Both novels employ the narrative device of staging voyeuristic scenes to provide revelatory insights into the character of the male protagonists. In Pity for Women (236-251), Costals arranges for Solange, concealed in a dovecote in his Port-Royal studio, to witness his meeting with Andrée, during which he brutally destroys her amorous expectations: “I showed you [Solange] that little episode so that you should see what happens to women I don’t care for” (253-54). “Well,” he asked again, “what did you think of that little scene? A real performance, eh?” “I wish I hadn’t seen it. When you made me read some of that woman’s letters, I felt sorry for her. But after seeing that, I have no pity left” (252). After Andrée’s distraught departure, Costals takes Solange’s virginity, employing post-coitus the metaphor of the lion with his prey,[3] that Beauvoir in The Second Sex labelled as “carnivorous arrogance” (220). In She Came to Stay, Françoise and Pierre return to her apartment after a blissful evening, but Pierre then suspects that Xavière has invited Gerbert back to her room. He stands outside her door and informs Françoise of his conviction the couple are making love. When Françoise expresses doubt, he admits he saw them making love through the keyhole, “I wanted you to know that they were in each other’s arms, but I thought you’d take my word for it. I was angry with you for forcing the truth out of me” (318). This deception leads to a rupture, followed by their reconciliation when Pierre admits his sense of shame at his voyeurism: “Her calm was restored. Pierre no longer seemed a monster to her, since he was capable of lucidly passing judgment on himself” (318). In both scenes, the man is responsible for the act of bad faith towards the woman he makes complicit and yet both Françoise and Solange accept the behavior, albeit on significantly different grounds.
In both novels, the two protagonists display murderous intent towards the individual who threaten their equilibrium, Xavière and Solange. Montherlant significantly reduced the references to Costals’s murderous imaginings in the 1953 edition of Les Jeunes Filles: “Many deletions exculpate Costals from the intent to murder his fiancée (seven allusions to killing her are reduced to one); Montherlant also eliminated his hero’s fantasies about destroying the women who exasperate him” (Bulwa 32). In The Prime of Life, Beauvoir discusses her fascination with death at the time of writing She Came to Stay and the impact on her of an incident in 1934 when a passenger lacking the money for the fare murdered a taxi driver: “He had chosen to commit a crime rather than be put to shame” (252). De Beauvoir acknowledged the ending of She Came to Stay was “the weakest aspect of the book” but “by killing Olga on paper I purged every twinge of irritation and resentment I had previously felt towards her, and cleansed our friendship of all the unpleasant memories that lurked among those of a happier nature” (The Prime of Life 270).[4] Both authors used a similar narrative device, murderous thoughts or the act of murder, to demonstrate the intensity of their protagonist feelings. For Beauvoir to associate Montherlant with the murderous deeds of his fictional characters, even by implication, as in her analysis of Montherlant’s plays The Dead Queen and The Master of Santiago (The Second Sex 227-78),[5] in light of her own use of a murderous deed to end She Came to Stay is disingenuous. Another common thematic, albeit only intimated, is the homosexuality of Costals and the lesbian attraction between Françoise and Xavière. Andrée writes to Pierre accusing him of his concealed homosexuality, “Of course you were half-woman yourself!”(284).[6] “The homosocial element, though not directly addressed, is pervasive in L’Invitee” (Emery 84). [7]
There are also significant differences. The women in She Came to Stay, notably Françoise and Elisabeth, display a much greater sense of personal and sexual autonomy than the four female characters in The Girls. Françoise is constantly striving to solidify her relationship with Pierre and Elisabeth to liberate herself from dependence upon Claude. Jealousy is not a theme in The Girls, indeed Andrée reproaches Costals for his lack of jealous feelings as a defect in his virility, “jealousy is one of the basic characteristics of the male” (The Girls 284), whereas jealousy is “dominant” in She Came to Stay (Moi, The Making of an Intellectual 20). The novels have also markedly different philosophical underpinning, She Came to Stay reflecting Beauvoir’s existentialism,[8] The Girls, at least in its revised version, reflecting Montherlant’s theory of alternance.[9]
4. Conclusion
The Girls and She Came to Stay share a complex interaction between autobiographical and fictional elements. They also share similarities of character and plot. This fact in itself undermines Beauvoir’s attribution of Costals’ opinions and character to Montherlant. In this light, it is hard to justify Beauvoir’s attacks on Montherlant, based in part on the actions and opinions of Costals, any more than if Montherlant had attacked Beauvoir on the basis of the opinions and actions of Françoise. By the time she wrote The Second Sex, Beauvoir knew from her own experiences, not least with She Came to Stay, the fluid line separating autobiography and fiction.[10]
There is no evidence that Beauvoir in writing She Came to Stay was influenced by The Girls, or indeed any other work of Montherlant.[11] However, given his literary status she would have been familiar with his work even before researching The Second Sex. She must have been conscious that her attacks on Montherlant, based on his fictional writings at least, were staged and polemicised. By placing Montherlant alongside Lawrence, Claudel, Breton and Stendhal, Beauvoir was tacitly acknowledging not only his influence but also his literary merit.[12] Montherlant may have served her purpose in The Second Sex as an easy target epitomising male attitudes to women, but the misogynist caricature of Montherlant, insofar as sustained by his fictional writings, was founded on a myth Beauvoir had created.[13] Beauvoir’s polemic against Montherlant shows the malign consequences that can results from ill-founded attacks not only for an author’s reputation but also the reception of their work.[14]
Works Cited
Bartov, Omer. “The Proof of Ignominy: Vichy France’s Past and Presence.” Contemporary European History, vol. 7, no. 1, Cambridge University Press, 1998, pp. 107–31. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/20081654.
Beauvoir, Simone de. The Prime of Life: 1929-1944. Translated by Peter Green, Paragon House, 1992.
---. The Second Sex. Translated by Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier, Alfred Knopf, 2010.
---. She Came to Stay. Translated by Yvonne Moyse and Roger Senhouse, Penguin Books, 1966.
Boulé, Jean-Pierre. Sartre Studies International, vol. 14, no. 1, 2008, pp. 115–17. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23511137.
Bulwa, Lillian. “‘Simone de Beauvoir on Montherlant, or Misogyny through Myth and Imagery.’” Simone de Beauvoir Studies, vol. 1, no. 1, Brill, 1983, pp. 22–39. JSTOR., www.jstor.org/stable/45173367.
Emery, Meaghan. “The Struggle For (Sexual) Being in Simone De Beauvoir’s ‘L’invitee.’” Simone de Beauvoir Studies, vol. 15, Brill, 1998, pp. 83–95. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/45170518.
Everley, Christine. “War and Alterity in ‘L’Invitée,’” Simone de Beauvoir Studies, vol. 13, Brill, 1996, pp. 137–50. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/45170462.
Fullbrook, Edward. “She Came to Stay and Being and Nothingness.” Hypatia, vol. 14, no. 4, 1999, pp. 50–69. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3810826.
Garet, Jean-Louis’ “Montherlant Sous l’occupation.” Vingtième Siècle. Revue d’histoire, no. 31, Sciences Po University Press, 1991, pp. 65–73. https://doi.org/10.2307/3768639.
Keefe, Terry. “Sartre and Beauvoir: Refining rather than ‘Remaking’ The Legend.” Simone de Beauvoir Studies, vol. 12, Brill, 1995, pp. 91–99. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/45186678.
Keenan, Colm. “Simone de Beauvoir dropped from TCD statue plan over alleged ‘grooming’ of sex partners. Irish Times, 29 April 2023.
Klaw, Barbara. “‘L’invitee’ Castrated: Sex, Simone De Beauvoir, and Getting Published or Why Must a Woman Hide her Sexuality?” Simone de Beauvoir Studies, vol. 12, Brill, 1995, pp. 126–38. www.jstor.org/stable/45186684.
Moi, Toril. “Simone de Beauvoir’s ‘L’Invitée’: An Existentialist Melodrama.” Paragraph, vol. 14, no. 2, Edinburgh UP, 1991, pp. 151–69. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/43263370.
---. Simone de Beauvoir. The Making of an Intellectual Woman, 2nd ed. Oxford UP, 2008.
Montherlant. The Girls. Translated by Terence Kilmartin, Pan Books, 1987.
---. “Service Inutile (1935). Avant propos.” Essais de Montherlant, Gallimard, 1963, pp. 571-92.
---.L’Équinoxe de Septembre suivi de Le Solstice de Juin et de Mémoire. Gallimard, 1977.
Myers, B.R. “Monster of Marriage.” The Atlantic, March 2010.
Musset, Shannon. “Simone de Beauvoir,” Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, https://iep.utm.edu/beauvoir/?utm_source=pocket_mylist.
Obajtek-Kirkwood, Anne-Marie. “D’une Occupation l’autre: Simone De Beauvoir d’un écrit l’autre.” Simone de Beauvoir Studies, vol. 14, Brill, 1997, pp. 102–13. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/45170502.
Rosenberg, Merrill A. “Montherlant and the Critics of the French Resistance.” The French Review, vol. 44, no. 5, American Association of Teachers of French, 1971, pp. 839–51. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/386325.
Sartre, Jean-Paul. “Qu’est-ce qu’un collaborateur?,” La Republique Française, August 1945.
Seymour-Jones, Carole. A Dangerous Liaison. The Overlook Press 2009.
Sipriot, Pierre. Montherlant sans masque: L’enfant prodigue (Vol. I), Robert Laffont, 1982.
---. Montherlant sans masque: Ecris avec ton sang 1932-1972. (Vol. II). Robert Laffont, 1990.
Vezzoso, Adrien. “Memoire: plaidoyer et réquisitoire d’un auteur moraliste.” Babel: Littératures plurielles.’ Vol 27, 2013, pp. 165-184. https://doi.org/10.4000/babel.3401.
Winegarten, Renee. “My Encounter with Henry de Montherlant.” The American Scholar, vol. 56, no. 1, The Phi Beta Kappa Society, 1987, pp. 103–09, at p. 104. JSTOR. www.jstor.org/stable/41211387.
[1] An abhorrence shared by Montherlant (“Service Inutile,” Essais de Montherlant, Gallimard, 1963, p. 577) and Beauvoir (Moi, The Making of an Intellectual Woman 17).
[2] By the time she wrote L’Invitée, Beauvoir and Sartre had abandoned sexual relations, Beauvoir commenting: “he is a warm, lively man everywhere but not in bed” (Moi, The Making of an Intellectual Woman 17, quoting from a letter of 18 August 1948 from Beauvoir to her lover Nelson Algren (1909-1981).
[3] “‘Well, that’s done!’ And he sniffed vaguely at this woman’s face, as a lion, tearing off chunks of meat it holds between its paws, stops now and then to lick it” (The Girls 256).
[4] “Xavière’s murder may look like the abrupt and clumsy conclusion of a drama I had no idea how to finish; but in fact it was the motive force and raison d’être behind the entire novel” (The Prime of Life 271). See Toril Moi, “Simone de Beauvoir’s ‘L’Invitée’: An Existentialist Melodrama.” Paragraph, vol. 14, no. 2, Edinburgh UP, 1991, pp. 151–69. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/43263370.
[5] “Alvaro [the Master of the Order of Santiago in The Master of Santiago] does not have far to go become a grand inquisitor: wild, solitary, unrecognizable; nor the king―misunderstood, rejected―to become a Himmler. They kill women, they kill Jews, they kill effeminate men and “Jewed” Christians, they kill everyone they want or like to kill in the name of those lofty ideas. … Such are Montherlant’s summits that he points out with an arrogant finger when he interrupts his “mouth-to mouth with life” (228).
[6] In The Second Sex, Beauvoir refers to Costals’ preference for boys over women (218), which she extends to Montherlant in more direct terms: “he does partake of unusual pleasures, those that can be had from animals, boys and preadolescent girls: he is indignant that a passionate mistress would not dream of putting her twelve-year-old daughter in his bed; this indignation is not very solar” (226-27). See, for a biography of Montherlant, Pierre Sipriot, Montherlant sans masque: L’enfant prodigue (Vol. I), Robert Laffont, 1982 and Montherlant sans masque: Ecris avec ton sang 1932-1972. (Vol. II). Robert Laffont, 1990. See, on Montherlant’s pederasty: Winegarten, Renee. “My Encounter with Henry de Montherlant.” The American Scholar, vol. 56, no. 1, The Phi Beta Kappa Society, 1987, pp. 103–09, at p. 104. JSTOR. www.jstor.org/stable/41211387.
[7] Meaghan Emery, “The Struggle For (Sexual) Being In Simone De Beauvoir’s ‘L’invitee.’” Simone de Beauvoir Studies, vol. 15, Brill, 1998, pp. 83–95, at p. 84. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/45170518. On Beauvoir’s experiences with lesbianism in the 1930s and 1940s, see Moi, The Making of an Intellectual, pp. 219-22
[8] See, on the complex interaction of Beauvoir and Sartre in their contributions to existentialism: Edward Fullbrook, “She Came to Stay and Being and Nothingness.” Hypatia, vol. 14, no. 4, 1999, pp. 50–69. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3810826; Terry Keefe, “Sartre and Beauvoir: Refining rather than ‘Remaking’ The Legend.” Simone de Beauvoir Studies, vol. 12, Brill, 1995, pp. 91–99, www.jstor.org/stable/45186678; and Shannon Musset, “Simone de Beauvoir,” Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, https://iep.utm.edu/beauvoir/?utm_source=pocket_mylist.
[9] A theory first developed by Montherlant in a 1926 essay entitled “Syncrétisme et Alternance” (Rosenberg 841).
[10] For Beauvoir’s view on the problems of “fictionalized fact,” see The Prime of Life, at p. 273.
[11] Beauvoir refers in The Prime of Life to several writers who influenced her while working on She Came to Stay: D. H. Lawrence, John Dos Passos, and Faulkner (253), Dashiell Hammett, Dostoevsky and Hemingway (274). Beauvoir’s only mention of Montherlant in The Prime of Life is at a visit with Sartre in 1934 to a museum in Rouen where they were amused by a collection of portraits of their contemporaries by Jacques-Emile Blanche, which included Drieu, Montherlant, Gide and Giraudoux (164).
[12] Montherlant was awarded the prestigious Grand Prix de la Littérature de L’Académie française in 1934 for his novel Les célibataires and in 1960 he was elected a member of the Académie française.
[13] Beauvoir herself has come under attack for her alleged role in ‘procuring’ (198) young women for Sartre (198), her own ‘paedophile tastes’ (216, 274) in Carole Seymour-Jones’ sensationalist biography of Sartre and Beauvoir A Dangerous Liaison (The Overlook Press 2009). Jean-Pierre Boulé, in his review of the biography, rightly identifies the books fundamental flaw: ‘ The most dispiriting aspect of this book is the way in which it conflates correspondence, fiction, and philosophy’ (117).
[14] Myers in an article in The Atlantic issue of March 2010 hypothesises that a reason for the fact that the translation of Montherlant’s tetralogy The Girls had been out of print for decades could be attributed to de Beauvoir’s polemic in The Second Sex. It was reported by Colm Keena in The Irish Times of 29 April 2023 that de Beauvoir was dropped from a list of female candidates to have their sculpture placed in the Old Library in Trinity College Dublin because of the allegations of “grooming” sex partners for Sartre.