528 - Join Us in France Travel Podcast

Table of Contents for this Episode

Categories: French Culture, French History

Discussed in this Episode

Simone de Beauvoir
Jean-Paul Sartre
Paris
Montparnasse
La Rotonde
Café de Flore
Montparnasse Cemetery
Saint-Germain-des-Prés
La Sorbonne
Albert Camus
Boris Vian
Yves Montand
Simone Signoret
Mao Zedong
Stalin
Nelson Algren
Emmanuel Macron
Germaine Greer
Doris Lessing
Anaïs Nin
Henry Miller
Madame Curie
Christine Lagarde
Simone Weil
Algeria
Radio Vichy
China
Soviet Union
Rhodesia (Zimbabwe)
England.

[00:00:15] Annie: This is Join Us in France, episode 528, cinq cent vingt-huit.

Bonjour, I’m Annie Sargent, and Join Us in France is the podcast where we take a conversational journey through the beauty, culture, and flavors of France.

Today on the podcast

[00:00:31] Annie: Today, I bring you a conversation with Elyse Rivin of Toulouse Guided Walks about Simone de Beauvoir.

Discover the fascinating life of this pioneering feminist, writer, and intellectual who challenged societal norms and left an indelible mark on women’s rights and philosophy. She’s been turned into a bit of a boogeyman by some, but you’ll see that she made a lot of sense.

Podcast supporters

[00:00:56] Annie: This podcast is supported by donors and listeners who buy my tours and services, including my Itinerary Consult Service, my GPS self-guided tours of Paris on the VoiceMap app, or take a day trip with me around the southwest of France in my electric car.

You can browse all of that at my boutique: joinusinfrance.com/boutique.

Patreon supporters get new episodes as soon as they are ready and ad-free. If that sounds good to you, be like them, follow the link in the show notes.

The Magazine segment

[00:01:27] Annie: For the Magazine part of the podcast, after my chat with Elyse today, I’ll discuss the changes to rental rules that took effect in France, on January 1st, 2025. They represent a significant shift that could affect your travel experience going forward, so I thought you’d like to know.

Introduction and Today’s Topic

[00:01:56] Annie: Bonjour, Elyse.

[00:01:56] Elyse: Bonjour, Annie.

[00:01:57] Annie: We have a fantastic topic today, someone that I didn’t know that much about. I only read one of her books very recently, but you had read more of her stuff. We’re talking about Simone de Beauvoir.

[00:02:13] Elyse: This is in a series of extraordinary women that we started with Simone Veil,

[00:02:22] Annie: so, Elyse, as always, I’m going to let you take it away because you like to do the biography type things, and then I will jump in to add my bit here.

[00:02:31] Elyse: Jump, jump, jump, jump, my froggy friend.

There you go.

Simone de Beauvoir: Early Life and Education

[00:02:35] Elyse: Okay, so let’s talk about Simone de Beauvoir, I don’t know how many more Simones we’re going to have, but there seem to be quite a few out there. Simone de Beauvoir is reallyfamous, I’d say famous now, because this is a woman who was born in 1908 and died in 1986. And was extremely influential in intellectual circles, and thinking circles, certainly in the mid 20th century, and a bit less as we get towards the end of the 20th century, interestingly enough. But she is really known as being one of the founders of the feminist movement, and I mean that in its largest sense, because it’s, you can argue that feminism is a bit different in each country, and that it has taken certain turns, and that the young women today do not have the same exact definition of feminism as perhaps was the case post World War II.

But she is definitely one of the people who is a founding member of the thinking behind feminism and certainly claimed it as a term that she herself wanted to use.

[00:03:48] Annie: Right. And so she is most famous for the book The Second Sex. But she was also a prolific writer. She wrote many other things, and I think she was a really good writer, as a matter of fact. I mean, even though I hadn’t read much, the one that I did read, I thought it was very well…

[00:04:05] Elyse: Which on did you read?

[00:04:06] Annie: It was the one about the death of her mother. She wrote that late.

[00:04:10] Elyse: She wrote that late. And interestingly enough, Jean Paul Sartre, who is of course, extremely important in her life and is an intellectual, very important in France, said that it was her best piece of writing, interestingly enough.

[00:04:23] Annie: I am not surprised. It was, in English it’s called ‘A Very Easy Death’, and it’s a very good book, like you can really relate to what she’s talking about, seeing her mother get old and get very sick and die.

[00:04:40] Elyse: Just like Annie Arnaud, the Nobel Prize winner, when we read her book about her mother. It’s interesting, maybe, I know two other women writers who also did wonderful books about their mothers, there is obviously a reason for that, huh, a connection.

Literary Achievements and Influences

[00:04:54] Elyse: The thing about Simone de Beauvoir is that she was an extremely prolific writer, as you mentioned, she wrote quite a few books that were considered to be fiction.

She won the Goncourt, which is the equivalent of the Booker Prize in England or the Pulitzer Prize in the United States, but even maybe more prized than that, in 1954 for a book called Les Mandarins, which is really a kind of book about her and her group of friends, which is of course, meaning she basically wrote about them and disguised it a little bit, you know, but that’s also the way Hemingway wrote about a few fabulous feasts in Paris and talked about all of his friends.

But so she was known for that. She was also of course known for writing many, many essays. She was an essayist. She was someone who started out in life wanting to be a writer. That was actually, even as a child, that was what she had announced that she wanted to do.

Simone de Beauvoir was actually born and brought up in a very conservative, Catholic, upper-middle class family. And she was sent to Catholic school, as a child. And it turns out that it was immediately recognized that she was quite, quite brilliant. And even as a young child, she was way ahead of everybody else in her classes.

And she originally was thinking of going into mathematics of all things.

Simone de Beauvoir Was a Polymath

[00:06:20] Annie: Right, so I have been watching a lot of interviews with her, because we have a lot of video footage, you know, it’s recent enough. And it turns out that when she went to the university, she signed up for 18 degrees at the same time.

[00:06:37] Elyse: 18 degrees at the same time?

[00:06:38] Annie: 18! Because in France, you can sign up for as many programs as you would like.

[00:06:44] Elyse: But then how do you take all the classes?

Well, Well, you don’t.

Oh.

[00:06:48] Annie: But you can go to the exams, and if you pass, you pass, okay? And I did this, in a way, but I only did two. I did, I signed up forDEUG d’Anglais, cause I thought my English was the cat’s meow, which it wasn’t, I realized that later, when I really learned English.

But and I also did DUT de communication. So you could, when you’re a student, you’ve paid your fee, you can sign up for as many things as you want, but 18 is ridiculous.

So she wanted to learn all about science, all about philosophy, all about literature. And she had an enormous capacity for work.

[00:07:26] Elyse: She had an enormous capacity to work and she was extremely determined.

Philosophical Pursuits and Teaching Career

[00:07:30] Elyse: Interestingly enough, she did actually wind up getting degrees or almost got the degrees in both Literature and Maths. And then one of her professors told her that her thinking and her way of arguing would make her a perfect candidate for doing Philosophy.

And so she wound up taking the exams to become a philosophy teacher, a philosophy professor. And then she did the agreg. And that’s very hard, I think, it’s extremely complicated to explain to non-French people what the agrégation is, because it sounds like it should be a PhD, but it’s not.

[00:08:08] Annie: Right. No, it’s a separate thing. It’s… you can be a doctor in a subject matter and not have the agrégation.

[00:08:15] Elyse: No, because it’s about education.

[00:08:17] Annie: It’s about education. It’s an extra exam that you take in front of a group of peers to prove that you can teach the subject.

[00:08:26] Elyse: And that’s the highest exam you can take in teaching beyond getting the postdoctoral university degree.

For high school teaching, it is the highest exam.

[00:08:36] Annie: Right. I had the good fortune of having a professor, a philosophy professor who had the agrégation. And let me tell you, he was very different from the other professors. No, he wasn’t History. He was a French teacher, French literature teacher. And he was really outstanding.

There’s nothing we could throw at him that he didn’t know. He read everything, even really modern stuff, even comic strips. He knew all the stuff. Because I think it takes a special kind of mind to do that. Anyway, agrégation is a very French thing. And you can do agrégation in a lot of subjects.

[00:09:12] Elyse: And it is extremely hard, because the couple of people I know here who have tried it including someone who’s trying now for the third time, who is very brilliant, it is extremely, extremely, extremely difficult. Yeah.

Personal Life and Relationships

[00:09:24] Elyse: So anyway, interestingly enough, I have no indication of how convincing that person was because she did switch, and she did indeed go and take her exams in philosophy. And it was then in 1929 that she received her agrégation, that she met in the process of doing her studies at the in the Sorbonne, that she met Jean Paul Sartre, who I suppose we should really do a podcast about one day because he is also extremely important as a thinker in France of the certainly middle 20th century.

And they were in the same group, a study group, and they became not just friends, but they began a relationship that is the only thing I can, the only adjective I can use to describe it is complicated, you know, and it lasted their entire lives. And they had another, they had a big group, among whom were some other very important intellectuals in the early and mid 20th century. And they each got a post teaching philosophy in a high school. At first she was sent far away actually to the south of France, and he was in Rouen.

And then, because they really did not want to be separated, he actually suggested that they get married and this is where it’s very interesting, because, maybe due to her very, very strict conventional Catholic upbringing, she wrote later on and said it was the last thing she ever wanted to do in her entire life.

And that was something that stayed with her for the rest of her life.

[00:10:58] Annie: Right, so it’s very interesting because starting at the age seven, this is one of those things that I heard in an interview, at age seven she was playing in the park and a very nice woman remarked to her how pretty her calves were.

And she turned around and said, I don’t care about my calves, I’m a person.

Like, my calves shouldn’t matter at all. And she had that attitude throughout her life, where she was very like, I am a thinking human being, not a pretty thing. So she was a believer in Catholicism until about the age 14, she says, one day she just thought, I’m believing with no good reason, like I don’t, I can’t think of a good reason to believe this or to disbelieve this. Perhaps it doesn’t matter at all.

And that was the end of that.

[00:11:53] Elyse: And that was the end of that. Yes, well, I do understand that, to be honest. I mean, I had something similar…

[00:11:58] Annie: But typically young women who are very pretty, they wouldn’t reject a compliment based on their looks. Like they would: Oh, thank you so much, they would, you know… if you happen to not be pretty…

[00:12:11] Elyse: She wasn’t a great beauty though. She was not somebody who became attractive to other people and to men because of her look. She was really, it was her intellect that attracted everybody.

[00:12:24] Annie: Right, but she was also a fine looking person.

She was fine.

Yeah, she was a good looking person, like… at any rate, I thought it was interesting that, from a very young age, she rejected this… this, like, Oh, don’t you look pretty and marvellous, you know, she was like… uh…

[00:12:38] Elyse: Yeah, something happened, interestingly enough, somewhere, that very early on, she insisted that she wanted to be recognized for her intellectual capacities.

[00:12:49] Annie: Which was great.

[00:12:51] Elyse: Which were great, really.

I don’t know, it’s interesting to think about that because, of course, her mother did not approve of her choices in life for a long time. Yet it didn’t bother her and she stayed close to her mother at the same time.

[00:13:04] Annie: Yes, so that’s really interesting as well, that she was totally, I mean, the traditional French woman at the time was married, raised her children, might have had a jobuntil she started having children, and then that was the end of that.

[00:13:18] Elyse: We’re talking, don’t forget she came of age in the 20s, which is still a time women did not vote, most people did not work unless they were relatively working class poor and they had to work, helping their husbands like in a shop or something like that. And she didn’t come from that kind of a background at all.

[00:13:37] Annie: No, no, her parents, I mean, they lived on, they’re kind of “une rente”. So they have property, and they just had income coming in from property, from bank accounts, from this and that. Yeah.

[00:13:51] Elyse: But so, so it’s interesting to see that she just forged ahead. I mean, she was just this kind of a bulldozer intellectually, and she and Sartre became the center of this very, very important group of intellectuals and thinkers.

Interestingly, at some point later on, near the end of her life, she was talking about Paris and the fact that she lived for a while, when she was even a child, near La Rotonde in the Montparnasse area, and at the end of her life, she had an apartment across from the cemetery of Montparnasse, which is actually where she is buried, and she said: ‘My life is Montparnasse’.

[00:14:29] Annie: Right. Her life, I mean, watching those, all those documentaries about her life, I thought, oh, I could write a VoiceMap tour based on her because it’s all in the same area. And I don’t think very many people would be interested in that, so I’m probably not going to do it, but…

[00:14:44] Elyse: There’s not that much to see except to say, Oh, she ate here, she slept here, you know, that kind of thing.

[00:14:49] Annie: Yeah, but Saint Germain des Prés also had a big, you know, I do know for a fact that in my Saint Germain des Prés VoiceMap, I point you to where she and Sartre had hotel rooms.

[00:15:03] Elyse: Uh huh.

[00:15:03] Annie: Because he lived in hotels.

[00:15:05] Elyse: He lived in hotels. And she basically stayed next to him, basically.

And then, of course, they had all these friends that were the jazz people in Saint Germain. I mean, this was all part of that whole epoch in any way, you know, Boris Vian and all those people. So, she was really a fascinating woman in that way. And so, this is the thing, though. In reading about her, and as I mentioned to you just a few minutes before we went on broadcast, I had to read, I minored in French literature in university.

So I had to read her. I mean, it was an assignment. I read The Second Sex. And I read, which one of the books of her memoirs, but I don’t remember actually, because there are two or three volumes, but I just remember some of the things that were in the books, and they have stayed with me all these years. Because at the same time, in The Second Sex, she talks about things that certainly were pertinent even to me, as a very young person.

And then at the same time in her memoirs, she just talks about things that are very disturbing.

Feminist Ideals and Controversies

[00:16:02] Elyse: And so one of the things I find about her personally is that I can admire her ideas as a feminist, independent, intellectual woman, but I don’t admire her. And I don’t admire her because I think that good part of her existence was in contradiction to what she actually wrote about.

And so that upsets me, and it bothers me, not that it makes any difference one way or the other in terms of history or anything else. But she had this complex ambiguity, because at the same time, she insisted on the independence of women, she insisted on women being intellectual beings, she also talked about something that is very pertinent today, and that is that being a woman is a social construct. That it is not a destiny by sex, because you’re born with a female sex. And today, a lot of young people really would understand that very, very well. Whereas at the time that she was living, that was not something that people would be willing to talk about at all.

[00:17:08] Annie: Yes, right. That’s right. Yeah. She was revolutionary in many ways. She was ahead of her time, let’s put it that way. Because I’ve heard, I heard her on many interviews say that she doesn’t think that, so she was a libertarian when it comes to sexual freedom.

[00:17:23] Elyse: Absolutely.

[00:17:24] Annie: Right. So she would have said, yeah, you can sleep with whoever you want, whatever sex, I’m sure she wouldn’t have batted an eye at more than one gender, well, whatever. So she was really extreme in that way, as well as her political positions as, whenever anybody put a microphone in front of her, she would tell people, women need to have their own jobs and their own money.

Now, this is at a time when women could not get a job without the permission of their husbands, could not have a bank account.

Not, you couldn’t open a bank account as a woman.

[00:18:00] Elyse: But that was true even into the 1960s.

[00:18:03] Annie: Yeah. Yeah. You couldn’t vote, of course, and so she would constantly bring this up, like, women need to have financial independence, because without that there’s nothing else, but she also pushed sexual, total freedom, like…

[00:18:19] Elyse: But it’s interesting, I don’t know about the interviews because I did not see any of them, but in fact, in her writing at first, she refuted the idea that she was doing this.

She did not admit to it. She did not admit to it too much, much later in her life. And in fact, two of the women, what happened was, and it’s hard to know exactly how this began. But of course, we’re talking about a time up till 1968 when women were in school with women, and men were in school with men. This was, there was no co ed education in France until 1960, after 1968.

And so she was a professor for women in good women’s high schools. And then of course she was eventually in Moliere High School, which is in Paris. And that’s where she stayed until she stopped being a teacher completely. But, she started having relationships in the real sense of the word with some of the students.

Now, obviously, what I find, this is why I find it problematic, is because she would choose the most brilliant students. That’s like a given. And at the same time, she was someone who at first denied it, but apparently two of the women who stayed in touch with her for a certain amount of time, and then eventually after she died, were still alive and so wrote about it, said it was a fact that they were having sexual relationships.

It wasn’t just a mentor kind of relationship. And she didn’t want to admit it. So she spouted things that she did not, at first wish to really admit, probably because it would’ve banned her from a good part of society.

[00:19:48] Annie: Well, she could have lost her job.

[00:19:48] Elyse: Well, she did eventually. And she was suspended twice for complaints about it.

Today, she would be taken in front of a tribunal, in front of a judge, at the time she was simply suspended. And the second time that that happened, that was the end of her teaching career in public education.

[00:20:08] Annie: All right, but Emmanuel Macron fell in love with his teacher much older than him. Now, we don’t know if anything was happening back then, but it’s not like it doesn’t happen still to this day.

[00:20:20] Elyse: No, course. I’m not saying that it doesn’t happen. It’s just that she was, she was also sharing these young women with Jean Paul Sartre, which makes it little bit different. It really makes it a little bit different because, as you say, libertarianism was certainly in the 20s and 30s extremely important.

And not political libertarian. No, but sexual freedom. Yeah, morality, if you want to call it that, I don’t know if that’s really morality.

The fact is, what bothers me, is not so much that she did that, is that she insisted that she wasn’t doing it. Okay. And for a long time, and that it became, if you read some, and I know that in the quotes, I translated some of the most famous of her statements about women in terms of feminism that come out of The Second Sex, because I think that they are the most important part of her heritage.

And some of them are really incredible. For instance, it would be very difficult for a woman to do the same as a man in every circumstance until universal equality is recognized.

She was aware of all of these things. To be a woman is not a terrible fatality, one must never assume that having ovaries condemns a woman to a lesser status.

So she was angry on some level. I mean, there was a certain amount of anger in all of this, and yet, she managed to forge a life that was totally independent and radical in relation to this kind of behavior. To be truly free, others must be free also. That’s a given. Ah, okay.

Impact and Legacy

[00:21:50] Elyse: I think that it’s really interesting that her pronouncements and what she wrote in The Second Sex are so vivid and so real and of course it created a huge scandal when it was published in 1949 because it was extremely graphic about women, and women’s bodies, and women’s functions.

[00:22:09] Annie: Right. So I, she also wrote another book, I can’t remember the title of it. That was very graphic about women’s bits.

[00:22:18] Elyse: Yes. She talks about women’s sexuality. She talks about women’s bodies and that’s functioning, and it’s to break a taboo. It’s to regularly break a taboo. It was, the book was considered to be utterly scandalous, absolutely horrifying.

Yet she’s sold 30,000 copies the first year of that book, and it’s been reprinted ever since and it’s still, it still sells. Like it’s, this is one that’s perennial.

It’s a basic book of feminist studies.

[00:22:50] Annie: Yeah, it is.

[00:22:51] Elyse: And so in her later life, I think it became clearer, at least to other people, that what she was trying to do was create a foundation of what is now considered to be feminist thinking. And then other people joined her who were a bit younger, a generation younger, and it became something that was very important, which is why I was given the book to read, even though it was in French studies, because it was a book that was really considered to be important in terms of the end of the 20th century.

But it’s interesting to me, that it’s hard to know if she wrote the book out of anger or not, because I don’t see any anger in her. But at the same time, she did many things. For instance, she had a, it’s very well known in terms, she talked about it and it was written about in a lot of other things.

Love and Intellectual Partnerships

[00:23:40] Elyse: There was an American writer named Nelson Algren,

[00:23:43] Annie: Yeah, yeah.

[00:23:44] Elyse: She was doing a lecture tour in the United States. And she met him, and they actually, they fell in love and they had this really passionate relationship that lasted for a couple of years, and then the end, and I remember, now maybe it’s because I was really young.

I mean, when I started university, I was really young. So I’m probably read this book when I was 19, you know, who knows what I was doing at the age of 19, not much. So at the age of 19, I’m reading this book, and she talks about how much she loved this man. And it was really passionate. And yet she gave up that relationship because she had this intellectual relationship with Sartre that she did not want to lose.

And of course, I’m a 19 year old going, Why would you do that? You know, I mean, why would you give up this man that seems to be the love of your life, to go and be with this guy who, number one, does not want to live with you? Number two, sleeps with zillions of women all the time, and who is simply your intellectual partner. You know, you can still have an intellectual partner and it doesn’t have to be the person that you have a passion for, you know.

[00:24:54] Annie: Sartre, like you mentioned earlier, also asked her to marry him so that they could teach in the same place. And she said No.

[00:25:01] Elyse: No. Right.

[00:25:02] Annie: And this Nelson, he also asked her to marry him so that she could live with him in the US and she said No.

[00:25:09] Elyse: No. She said no.

[00:25:11] Annie: So the best way to never see Simone de Beauvoir again was to ask her to marry you.

Exactly.

[00:25:16] Elyse: Except that with Sartre, she… except with Sartre, but which apparently, you know, if you read, especially in her memoirs, you really understand that beyond a certain point, it became a meeting of minds more than anything else, and this was something that she needed to have in her life, no matter what.

They became partners in their political activity, particularly during and after World War II. Now, this is something very curious.

Simone de Beauvoir’s Controversial Radio Vichy Work

[00:25:44] Elyse: She worked for Radio Vichy. So there’s a lot of speculation and commentary because apparently, at the beginning anyway, Radio Vichy was not as pro-Nazi as it became later on.

And she was basically doing cultural programs. She was basically doing things that were non political. And I don’t even know if it lasted for more than just a year or so that she did that, but of course it was brought up to her afterwards, after World War II was over, that she actually worked for them.

But at the time she didn’t consider that to be any problem whatsoever, you know.

French Resistance and Existentialism

[00:26:18] Annie: Their relationship with the Second World War was complicated because, I think you could classify them as resistant in their heads, but they never did anything about it, not a thing. Which puts them right in line with most French people, if you think about it. Most French people never did anything.

A few entered the Resistance. I mean, perhaps, I don’t know, 5 percent of the population maybe at most. Don’t quote me on that, I’m just guessing.

But, you know, they didn’t do anything about it. And her excuse was, well, we’re not political, you know, but then later they became very, very, very, very political, to absurdity, as a matter of fact. That’s the reason why I think, I mentioned to you earlier that with Simone Weil, there’s no part of her life that I don’t admire.

All of it.

Whereas Simone de Beauvoir, I admire some of her writing, and her activities, and what she promoted, but there’s a lot of it where I’m like, eww.

Yeah. Yeah, I agree with you. We don’t always agree on which parts we go eww about, but it true, she is not the most, she was a relatively complicated person in that sense, yes.

Sartre and the Philosophy of Existentialism

[00:27:33] Annie: You’re absolutely right. And it is interesting to think that, now Sartre, for those of you out there who really have no idea, Sartre is in a way, even more complicated because he was a philosopher. He wasn’t just a philosophy teacher. He was actually a philosopher. I would say she was a writer. She was basically a writer.

He was a philosopher. And he was the inventor, if you want to call it that, of existentialism. Which some people have called very nihilistic, and other people have simply said is more of a way of dealing with the reality of being a human being, making moral choices without it being connected in any way to religion, which is kind of the way I see existentialism, you know?

[00:28:15] Elyse: But, it influenced a huge, two generations of writers and two generations of thinkers. And at first they, it was Albert Camus who was very influenced by it. And then he went off to sort of do his own thing, which is a lot more humanistic in approach.

But he is really famous for being the originator, or maybe he’s the one who coined the term, I don’t really know, but the whole circle of people who surrounded them were that. And to me, I’m not sure I completely understand it, but existentialism should involve engagement in things, and is not apolitical. And so it’s strange that during World War II they were really pretty much apolitical.

[00:28:54] Annie: Yeah, I think they were very scared of what was happening and they didn’t want, they were afraid of what might happen if they opened their mouths. They were still very young, not as famous as they became later. And they had just enough fame to be noticed, but not so much that they were out of reach.

Like, you know, when you get to a certain level of fame…

[00:29:20] Elyse: You think you’re untouchable?

[00:29:21] Annie: Yeah, you might be untouchable. You might be like Stephen King. Stephen King constantly talks smack about Donald Trump.

It’s not going to hurt him.

[00:29:30] Elyse: No, but nobody cares, I mean, he’s not a politician.

[00:29:34] Annie: Right, but he’s untouchable in that sense, you know, it won’t make any difference.

[00:29:38] Elyse: Right.

[00:29:39] Annie: But if you’re somebody much, much smaller, that has some fame but not so much, you might be careful what you say.

Post-War Influence and The Second Sex

[00:29:45] Elyse: But what’s interesting then is that we come out of World War II and it is in 1949 that she publishes The Second Sex. If I’m not mistaken, it was in ’46 that women were able to vote for the first time. So this is just post World War II. And it is in ’49 after having written quite a few books that she publishes and makes a huge success, and becomes notorious for The Second Sex.

And I think that is really her seminal work. I mean, her writing that is fiction is one thing, her essays are interesting, but really, if you think about it, The Second Sex is groundbreaking in terms of talking about women, and talking about their equality, talking about their bodies. The other person it makes me think of whose work I also read enormously at a certain point in my life is Doris Lessing, who of course won a Nobel Prize in Literature and who’s originally from

Rhodesia, Zimbabwe, and then who went on to live the rest of her life in England. But she made no bones about the fact that she was writing as a feminist, but she was writing fiction. Whereas, I think, Simone de Beauvoir was writing philosophical tracts that she wanted people to pay attention to.

What is interesting is that if you quote some of the things from her writing, it’s aggressive. It’s not untrue, it’s just that it’s, there’s a certain aggressivity in it, but she herself seems to not have had that anger in her as a person.

Simone de Beauvoir’s Feminist Legacy

[00:31:12] Annie: Well, she laid it out in ways. There’s a quote of hers that I saw: ‘Never forget that a political, economic, or religious crisis will be enough to challenge women’s rights. These rights are never vested. You must remain vigilant your whole life.

[00:31:31] Elyse: And that, you can say is what’s going on in some parts of the world right now.

[00:31:35] Annie: Yeah, yeah, you can say that.

[00:31:37] Elyse: As soon as there’s any kind of political crisis, economic crisis, the first people who pay the price are women. And that’s where she was absolutely right. And so she is really one of the founding women of the very, very important group of people who come after her, both in the arts, and in writing, and in politics. If there hadn’t been a Simone de Beauvoir, there would not be other people, even people like…

[00:32:08] Annie: Christine Lagarde is the one you want.

[00:32:09] Elyse: That’s the one I want.

So, I mean, all of these people who have forged ahead and have taken on roles that in the past were really exclusively for men, they all owe a huge thanks to Simone de Beauvoir, even if she basically was a theoretician, she is really one of the two or three people who created the structure for all of this to happen in the last 50, 60 years.

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[00:32:34] Annie: So let’s talk a little bit about things that happened towards more the end of her life.

Communist Sympathies and Intellectual Circles

[00:32:41] Annie: So this Nelson Algren was a communist thinker as well, as far as an American can be a communist. So that probably influenced her some, but later in her life, she was a dedicated communist.

Like she really believed…

[00:32:57] Elyse: But she never joined the party.

[00:32:58] Annie: No, she didn’t join the party, but that’s all she ever not do.

She was invited by Russian, Chinese, Cuba, to be, you know, on official visits and they would parade her and Sartre saying, see, these great French intellectuals are with us andisn’t that grand, whatever.

And they really promoted the idea of communism in France, saying that it was, that’s how the world should be run and totally ignored the horrible things that were happening. If they had inquired even a little bit, they would have known.

I mean, Mao Zedong killed a lot of people.

[00:33:44] Elyse: Stalin, Stalin killed a lot of people.

I don’t even think a lot is the correct word, I mean, the millions, and millions, and millions.

Now, my understanding is, particularly in France, but not only, that there was a whole group of intellectuals, just immediately post World War II, who became what these were,that is what Simone de Beauvoir and Jean Paul Sartre were, which is simply what is called fellow travelers.

That is, they were highly sympathetic to all communist causes, but they did not actually belong to the Communist Party. And because they were relative celebrities, intellectual celebrities, but there were also others who were entertainment celebrities, they were invited to these countries like China and to Stalinistic Soviet Union, to be shown off, and of course became basically the puppets by doing so.

Now, in the case of some people, they realized what was happening, and that is the case of, for instance, Yves Montand and Simone Segnoret. It took them a number of years, but they eventually came out and spoke, and admitted to having been used, and then changed, publicly changed their ideas. But I don’t know that Simone de Beauvoir ever did.

[00:35:01] Annie: She did not.

So she had written a book called ‘The Long March’, or ‘The Longest March’ or something like that, that was all in praise of what Mao was doing. And she later said, okay, this was, I made a mistake, but she never said that Mao was wrong, or was a murderer, or any of that thing.

She just said, oh, my book went a little too far, you know, whereas Camus, for instance, he just, he said, no, that is just, we cannot treat people that way. You know, because he was more of a humanist and he cared more about the fate of people, whereas Simone de Beauvoir and Jean Paul Sartre were more, you know, the ideas of communism made sense to them, and so it didn’t matter what it did in reality.

They just wanted a perfect political system, which of course it is not. But they saw it that way. And so they were really complicated, I think. And it’s hard to not just go, how can smart people like them be taken in that way.

[00:36:09] Elyse: Sweetheart, you know, smart people are taken in by lots of things. I mean, it isn’t just communism. I think that there was a time, I think, from what I understand, with a certain number of these people, now, as you mentioned, I mean, Simone de Beauvoir was a brain.

I mean, basically, you know, whatever else you can say about her, she was a brain, you know, and so was, so Jean Paul Sartre, I think that it was, as you mentioned, it’s the idea, the idealization of something that somehow clouds the view so that you don’t see the reality of it. Some people saw a reality sooner than later. Others never gave up that idea. I think that unfortunately that does happen. And I think that probably they were certainly not the only ones. It’s just that the more somebody is famous in public, the more it has an effect and a kind of snowball effect, because these are people who do influence other people and influence other people’s thinking.

You also wind up having a lot of recrimination afterwards because why did you take that petition? Why did you not speak out against this and that? I don’t know, maybe it’s just my getting older is making me more, I don’t know what the word is, it’s like people get duped all the time, you know?

Yeah, we do.

We do. You know, we do. And I think that the problem was that coming out of World War II and the devastation of fascism, and the Nazis, and seeing what happened in France and

they both were children during World War I, I think that you look for an ideal and there’s a point at which even when you have that kind of a great intellect, you try not to see the bad sides of it somehow.

I mean, that’s hard.

[00:37:47] Annie: Yeah, they were in an intellectual bubble that didn’t let them see kind of broadly enough what was happening.

[00:37:55] Elyse: And so of course, there was a lot of falling out among all these, but there was a massive group of intellectuals who developed in France who did a lot to influence general intellectual thinking post World War II. They were the group that were the most influential everywhere in Western world. And it was the French.

It really was. And so, the artists and the writers, this was coming out of World War II. They were the ones that were trying to postulate new ways of thinking, new ways of being, I don’t know.

[00:38:25] Annie: They weren’t perfect human beings, but they had interesting ideas.

Anti-Colonialism and Women’s Rights Activism

[00:38:30] Annie: And the other thing that happened towards the end of her life is that she was dead set against the colonization of any sort, which France didn’t have as many colonies as, say, the English did, but we had plenty. And French people didn’t exit out of their colonies as semi gracefully as the English did.

Like, the war in Algeria was terrible and she was dead set against it.

[00:38:55] Elyse: She signed, she was one of the signers of the petition about the liberation, about independence for Algeria, but also she was one of the founders of the movement to help women who had been tortured during the war in Algeria, specifically focusing on women as victims of the war, because a lot of women who fought on the side of the Algerians, there weren’t that many women that fought on the side of the French, but on the side of the Algerians were taken and tortured. And so she was one of the group of women who created this petition to free these women and to not have them convicted as being traitors or something like that.

And then she, again, signed the petition later, if I’m not mistaken, it was in 19, what, 1970 something, the petition about abortion, the famous petition of the 343, many of whom are famous women who signed a petition saying that they had had, at least once in their life, an abortion and that was the moment to have the law passed.

[00:39:59] Annie: Right, and we did another episode about Simone Weil and where we talked extensively about abortion and what her thinking was about that. Because Simone Weil was very, was a traditional kind of person as far as her personal life was concerned. She married, she had three boys, as far as I know, no affairs, whatever, you know, she was just a traditional run of the mill woman.

And I think in many ways, in my opinion anyway, the feminist views held by these traditional women hit harder than the ones by very free women.

Because you can always say, oh, look, she’s just…

[00:40:41] Elyse: A crazy bohemian.

[00:40:42] Annie: Yeah, yes. And that’s why she has those thoughts. Whereas with Simone Weil, you know, she was very traditional, but she still said, you know, we have to have women have the freedom to make decisions about their own bodies, and their own bank accounts, and their own voting and all of that.

And these concepts are being challenged insome countries and, it’s really never, the fight is never won.

[00:41:10] Elyse: No, not unless it’s made into constitutional law, which it has been in France. It has been. And interestingly enough, so the manifesto of the 343 was in fact, of course, in 1971, which was just before when it went into places a law.

And then in 1977, so in 1977, just about 70, she’s 69 years old, she became editor-in-chief of a magazine called Radical Feminists. And this is the activity that she continued actually up until her death, at the age of 78. She went back. Jean Paul Sartre died in 1980. He was just a couple of years older than her.

So the last few years of her life, I don’t know if she gave many public interviews, but she just went back to her writing, doing her feminist writing.

Reflections on Simone de Beauvoir’s Impact

[00:41:59] Elyse: And I would assume that by then, certainly by the 1980s, she realized the influence that she had had, both by the writing of The Second Sex, more than her fiction, because she did win the Goncourt in 1954, which was five years later.

But I think the books that influenced the world the most and has made her stay in history the most are the books that she has written about the feminine condition, you know.

[00:42:25] Annie: Right. And she never had any children, which is another thing that she was very, it was shocking back then to hear that a woman didn’t want to marry, didn’t want to have any children. That was like, people couldn’t understand that, especially men couldn’t understand that. And she just thought all of these barriers need to be broken.

Now, I don’t think she ever said to women who were married and were having children, you made the wrong choice, but she wanted things to be, she wanted it to be possible for a young woman to choose whether she wanted to marry and have children or not.

[00:43:07] Elyse: And you know, that is still interestingly, maybe less so in the immediate young generation right now, but there is a carryover of that because you sometimes have people say, Oh, how come you don’t have children?

You know, there’s this assumption that, Oh, there must be something wrong. It couldn’t be simply a choice. I mean, for some people it is a choice, for some people it’s not, unfortunately, it is just what happens, but we don’t say that to men.

[00:43:36] Annie: Exactly. That’s the thing. We never ask a man do you have children, and if he says no, you don’t go, oh, poor dear, what’s wrong with you? Yeah.

[00:43:46] Elyse: Yeah.

[00:43:46] Annie: Are you a violently feminist person, or are you just broken?

[00:43:53] Elyse: Right, right, no.

[00:43:55] Annie: Why do we do it to women?

[00:43:57] Elyse: Well, there you are. I mean, this is your… so she was extremely important for all of these things. And I think that at the same time, it’s just inevitable. The book that she wrote in 1949, which is now what? It’s 50, 60, 70, 75 years old. It’s probably, if I reread it now, it would have some things that I would find very outdated, you know, but at the same time, it was a breakthrough book. And the fact that she talked about women, both in terms of their physical desire and in their intellectual independence, was just something that had not been done before.

There were little bits of that, you know, you get the suffragettes in England, you get people at the end of the 19th century who are,even Madame Curie, I mean, people who have great intellectual power, but they were married and had children at the same time, you know, the idea of making this an absolute case of liberty was just something totally new.

And that is really Simone de Beauvoir.

[00:44:54] Annie: Yeah, she was, I think she’s an interesting person.

I really enjoyed reading the book about the end of the life of her mother.

I thought that was very profound. I would recommend that one. Would you recommend other books by her?

I mean, is it worth, is she worth reading today?

[00:45:12] Elyse: I think the memoirs are actually really interesting, but I think that if you haven’t done studies on about, if you don’t know any of these people, it might not mean that much because she mentions all of these intellectuals of the 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s, some of whom are not even alive anymore, but they were the powerhouse.

This was, I mean, France was the intellectual powerhouse mid 20th century in general anyway. I found it interesting, even though I had no idea who some of these people were, because she talks about her place in all of this. So, I don’t know, I would be interested maybe in re reading some of those texts again, to see how interesting I find them now, but I think mostly they’re interesting to see how she positions herself as a woman in the midst of all of this, because it was pretty male heavy, anyway.

[00:46:04] Annie: Yeah, and they might be in the public domain by now.

[00:46:07] Elyse: I think they are.

[00:46:08] Annie: Yeah, I wonder if I could find a, like a… somebody who read The Second Sex.

[00:46:15] Elyse: Recently?

[00:46:16] Annie: Yeah. I mean, not on Audible.

It’s not on Audible, well, it is on Audible, but I would have to use a credit.

And I was like, ah, and it’s a really long book.

I was like, I don’t really want to listen to all of that.

[00:46:27] Elyse: Can’t believe that I actually read it all.

[00:46:29] Annie: Maybe you didn’t…

[00:46:30] Elyse: I’m pretty sure I did. Maybe you read the Cliff’s Notes.

Ah, no, no, no. I did read the Cliff’s Notes for a couple of the literature pieces that we had to read in class because I just couldn’t wade my way through it, you know, but… Yeah, well, the professors I had then are probably all gone and in heaven right now, so it wouldn’t make any difference, you know. But no, I did read the book, and I, it left a lasting impression on me. It really did.

[00:46:54] Annie: And also the fact that it was such a controversial like, shocking book, I think would make people want to read it.

I mean, a person like you, I think you’d want to read it, because it’s, like a shocking book.

[00:47:08] Elyse: Well, especially, I mean, I grew up in a, you know, really relatively nice, conventional middle, lower middle class family, you know.

I mean, I was supposed to grow up to be the good little girl and be well behaved and do all of that kind of stuff, you know.

Yeah, I mean you were for the most part.

Well, I was until I got into art school and got the when hell broke loose, you know.

[00:47:30] Annie: One of one of these days we’re going to have to do an episode that’s called When All Hell Broke Loose with Elyse.

[00:47:38] Elyse: I think thatmaybe there are excerpts that stay in my mind after all these years, just because I was from a relatively sheltered background and it was like, Oh, you know, I mean, you read these things, you go, Oh, you know, I don’t think that young people today would have the same reaction, you know.

[00:47:55] Annie: Maybe not.

[00:47:56] Elyse: It’s a totally different world.

[00:47:57] Annie: Maybe not. But all these things that she wrote about the female bits, like, it’s like nobody cared. Like nobody wanted to see it or talk about it, or explore it or, like, it was like, mm mm we…

[00:48:11] Elyse: Well, okay, now, there is a thing though, that for instance, you have writers, now, I may be wrong about the chronology, but you have a writer like Anaïs Nin, who was involved with the writer Henry Miller.

These were people who wrote things that were fiction, and it was scandalous, and in fact, in some cases, it was actually banned or censored. But it was considered to be fiction, it was sold as fiction. Whereas the differences that Simone de Beauvoir was writing not fiction, because basically you can get away with a lot of stuff if you call it fiction, you know?

Sure.

Whereas what she was doing was documenting what it was like to be a woman. And I have to say that those pieces did not shock me so much as they were really a revelation to read a woman talking about them. She also wrote something that has stayed with me all these years, and it’s actually, unfortunately, even more pertinent now than it was before, and that is, she said, as you get older, your body gets older, but you stay the same young spirit that you always are.

You know, you just are, you are just you, you know. As such, there are lots of things like that in the book that are really, really interesting to read.

I don’t remember, to be honest, if she talks about some of the intrigues in her personal life. That’s something else. I think she talked more about the female condition.

A woman in the United States who followed generation later is Germaine Greer, who I think is actually still alive. She must be quite old now. But who,who basically followed with a book about the female condition, but was much more conciliatory towards men.

Places to Visit in the Footsteps of Simone de Beauvoir

[00:49:52] Annie: And so, to end on a happy note, let’s say that if you want to follow in Simone de Beauvoir footsteps, go visit Montparnasse.

Go to the cemetery at Montparnasse. She and Sartre are together, and they’re not at Père Lachaise but at Montparnasse. Montparnasse has a lot of interesting graves and people are buried there as well.

And also La Rotonde is a lovely restaurant, I really like it. And also go to Saint Germain des Prés because that’s where a lot of these people hung out, and lived a part of their life anyway.

[00:50:32] Elyse: Yes, and you can sort of feel the ghosts of Simone de Beauvoir, Jean Paul Sartre, maybe Boris Vian and all these people hanging out in the cafes right around there.

They’re there in spirit all the time.

[00:50:46] Annie: Thank you so much, Elyse.

You’re welcome Annie.

Au revoir.

Thank you Patrons!

[00:50:57] Annie: Again, I want to thank my patrons for giving back and supporting the show. Patreon supporters get new episodes as soon as they are ready and ad-free. If that sounds good to you, please be like them, follow the link in the show notes. And patrons get many exclusive rewards for doing that, you can see all the details at patreon.com/joinus.

And a special shout out this week to our new Join Us in France champions, Verity Dimock, who is a new yearly patron from Canada, Pam from Australia, Arthur Siegel, Ashley Senfield, Martha Meyer, Karen Dunn, Diane Goldman, Ellen Pearson, Virginie Robertson, Timothy Dyess, Azura Sanchez, and J. R. Hill.

Karen wrote: ‘I’ve been listening to your podcast for about six months. It has been extremely helpful and entertaining. Thank you so much for valuable information. Thank you for those kind words, Karen.

And thank you, Teresa Perdue, Ted Nunn, and Chris Larson for renewing your yearly membership.

Thank you, Heather Saint Jacques, Stephen Struck, and Alexis Butler for editing your pledge up. And to all my current patrons, it’s wonderful to have you on board in the community of travel enthusiasts and Francophiles who keep this podcast going.

And to support Elyse, of course, you’ve heard today how wonderful she is, go to patreon.com/ElysArt.

My thanks also to an anonymous donor who sent in a generous one time donation using any green button on joinusinfrance.com that says ‘Tip your guide’.

That person wrote: ‘Annie, thank you for your amazing work. I prefer to remain anonymous. Happy Holidays’, thank you, and Happy New Year to you as well, anonymous donor.

I want to share an email exchange I had with Brenda Johnson soon after she became a patron. I edited what she wrote for brevity. Bonjour Annie, I counted up and I have visited France 16 times. My first trip to Europe was in 1980. My college organized five week trips and I went on the trip with our art history professor. My most recent trip to France was in the Fall of 2022 when we flew in and out of Geneva and spent two weeks in the Haute Savoie and the Jura. In between were many independent trips to explore all over France.I would buy the Michelin green guide for the area we were planning to visitand my vacation would start in my head as soon as I started the itinerary.

I had hoped to travel more when I quit working but my mom had a serious series of health setbacks and lives with me for increasing amounts of time. She died three months ago. I’m sorry to hear that. And I was so blessed by the time we were together, including one trip years ago to Switzerland and Paris.

So for the last year, I have so enjoyed listening to your podcast and remembering my experiences in places you talk about and planning for future visits.

Thank you very much, Brenda. It’s heartwarming to read testimonials like this. I know that the Join Us in France travel podcast is not going to cure cancer, okay?

But it does provide entertainment, comfort, and company to people who love France. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. I hope you get to come back at some point.

Review Les Halles

[00:54:39] Annie: Somebody left a lovely review of my food tour in Les Halles, a very informative and entertaining tour. I have stayed in Rue Montorgueil neighborhood during several past visits in Paris, but still learned a lot even though I’m familiar with the area.

I especially appreciate the historical perspective of the region and insights into the restaurants and shop, trusted repeat customer.

This is a fantastic neighborhood for all gourmands to explore.

All of Annie Sargent’s VoiceMap walking tours are excellent, she shares her knowledge and love of Paris in the warmest and most engaging manner.

Well, thank you very much.

About my Montmartre tour, truly excellent, this tour had so many great stories of the area, I feel lucky to have found it, highly recommended, thank you.

And about my Saint-Germain-des-Prés tour, fantastic tour, easy to follow, took me places I would not have ventured without it, and great stories to go along.

Another thing about my tours is that I update them when necessary. I’ll be on my way to Paris next week, actually, or the week after that, I can’t remember, anyway, soon to change my Île de la Cité tour, which includes Notre Dame, because things have changed a lot around there, haven’t they? I mean, it’s a beautiful, beautiful change.

And remember that podcast listeners get a big discount for buying these tours from my website. And if you buy directly from me, remember it’s a manual process, I’m not a robot, so give me a few hours to send you the codes. If you need them immediately, get them from the VoiceMap app directly, and then that’s a direct download immediately.

If you want to read more reviews of these tours, go to joinusinfrance.com/VMR. That stands for VoiceMap Reviews.

And if you’re thinking about a trip to France this year and have a hard time deciding what to do, I can help you with my one on one consultations on Zoom. For most podcast listeners, the Bonjour service is all you need. We talk for an hour and I help you make some choices. Okay? Because a lot of people, they’re not sure how long to spend, do it this way or that way, I can cut to the chase for you because I’ve done these things. I know that people who listen to the podcast have a lot of information, they know a lot, and Bonjour is usually all you need.

But if you need more in depth and you want a day by day itinerary and all of that, you can sign up for a VIP service. And you can see all of the details and book that at joinusinfrance.com/boutique.

New Holiday Rental Regulations in France

[00:57:13] Annie: All right, let’s talk about new holiday rental regulations in France.

This is what you need to know. The French government is tightening rules on short term holiday rentals effective January 1st, 2025. The new law aims to address the housing shortage that affects locals especially in popular tourist destinations.

Here’s what changes to expect.

Number one, mandatory registration. Any property rented out, even occasionally, must be registered with local authorities and have a unique registration number. False declarations could result in fines up to 20,000 Euros. So that’s serious, and I’m sure a lot of people who thought they could get away with not registering are now going to think, ah, maybe I should.

Number two, change of use authorization, renting out second homes or properties as furnished holiday accommodations require a format change of use.

Failure to comply may lead to a 10,000 Euro fine. So again, this is a registration type of deal.

Number three, energy efficiency rules. Newly registered rentals must meet stricter energy performance ratings. Existing rentals have up to 10 years to comply with these requirements.

This is affecting all rentals, whether they are long term or short term. And if you ask me, it’s a good thing. We need to do better with energy efficiency in our homes.

Number four, tax reforms. Tax allowances for furnished tourist rentals will decrease, aligning more closely with residential rental rates.

And classified tourist accommodations will see allowances drop to 30 percent of annual revenue under 15,000 Euros.

So, this is because, so far, it was more advantageous to rent a property, an apartment, as a short term rental than to rent it for a long term rental. And so they are reversing that and they are now making those two things more aligned.

And that means that some people will stop doing short term rentals for tourism.

Number five, rental caps for primary residences. The annual limit for renting out primary residences as holiday rentals is reduced from 120 to 90 days. Okay, so, really, it has to be occasional and not, because 120 days is quite a lot.

Number six, local authority powers, local governments can impose stricter rules. And by local governments, we mean cities. Including rental bans in specific areas, such as Montmartre and the Marais in Paris, because there it is out of control, people cannot find a place to live, because just about every property there is just for short term rentals. And that has to stop. I’m all for travel, but come on.

So the law also affects second home owners who must now declare rental income to French tax authorities, even if they reside abroad. So there might be some of you listening who own property in France and rent it out. Well, it affects you as well.

Airbnb responded by saying that these changes could harm families relying on rental income, while some locals applaud the measures as essential to protecting community housing. And for that, yes, it’s, I mean, that’s a political question. Personally, I think that it’s okay to rent your home so long as you’re willing to play by the rules. And it’s fine to impose some rules on property owners.

I think you should consider these new regulations if planning to rent property in France, either as an owner or as a renter. I agree that rentals make sense for folks who travel with children and families.

They also make sense for folks who want to cook most of their own meals. And I wanted you to be prepared for changes, possibly price increases as owners pass the cost of renovations and regulations onto the renters.

My thanks to podcast editors, Anne and Christian Cotovan, who produced the transcripts.

Next podcast, an episode with Katherine Butler about how to enjoy a romantic vacation in Paris. And remember, Patrons get an ad-free version of this episode, click in the link in the show notes of this episode to be like them. Thank you for listening. And I hope you join me next time so we can look around France together.