---
aliases:
  - daughters
author:
  - '[[thoughts/Simone de Beauvoir|Simone de Beauvoir]]'
category:
  - philosophy
date: '2025-12-06'
description: first volume of de beauvoir's autobiography, tracing her youth in bourgeois paris, rejection of catholicism, and early intellectual development leading to her relationship with sartre.
finished: null
id: Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter
modified: 2026-06-05 15:07:59 GMT-04:00
notebook: null
pdf: null
posters: '[[library/posters/memoirs-of-a-dutiful-daughter.jpg|memoirs-of-a-dutiful-daughter.jpg]]'
status: current
subcategory:
  - love
  - o/relationship
tags:
  - philosophy
  - love
title: Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter
translator:
  - James Kirkup
year: 1958
authors:
  - '[[thoughts/Simone de Beauvoir|Simone de Beauvoir]]'
created: '2025-12-06'
published: '2025-12-06'
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slug: library/Memoirs-of-a-Dutiful-Daughter
permalink: https://aarnphm.xyz/library/Memoirs-of-a-Dutiful-Daughter.md
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---
## Le Sillon and Zaza

Zaza’s father had belonged to [[thoughts/Le Sillon|Le Sillon]], the Catholic democratic movement associated with Marc Sangnier. Beauvoir recalls repeating her father’s amusement at an assault on Sangnier’s supporters. Zaza objects, and Simone realizes she has borrowed a judgment she cannot defend. The episode connects Zaza’s family’s sense of Catholic social responsibility with Simone’s growing scrutiny of her own inherited opinions. See the [French text](https://livreur2soleil.com/yms/Ebooks/Romans/Simone%20De%20Beavoir/Memoires%20d_une%20jeune%20fille%20rang%20-%20Simone%20de%20Beauvoir.pdf), in the rue Saint-Benoît passage.

## reading notes, pp. 130–131

Page references are to my reading copy. These are questions to develop against the passages.

- **p. 130, love life:** return to this passage and its relation to the discussion of envy on the following page.
- **p. 131, envy:** explore Beauvoir’s argument against envy alongside the way her father communicates grievances and disagreements. What happens to a grievance when it is explained as envy? Does that explanation account for the disagreement, or allow its substance to go unexamined? Distinguish the judgments she inherits from her father from the account she gives of them as the memoir’s author.