Bossing the Bull Around

The marginalia of the minotaur drawn by an anonymous draftsperson in my copy of Jean Cocteau's collected diaries, Past/Tense.

June 20, 1952

What Theseus saw as he approached Greece, we saw this morning around eight, a sun very dangerous for the wax of Icarus’s wings. Engine trouble. Anchor in a high swell. Paul overhauls. We are still fifty miles from Candia. We start up again at ten. Patches of snow on the mountaintops.

One o’clock. We turn off the motor, which is overheating. These necessary and unpleasant stops (because of the swell) keep us from arriving before dark. We wait on deck.

Minos in love with Theseus. Pasiphaë still infatuated with her white bull and furious that her son is imprisoned because he has his father’s head. Phaedra, who calls her mother a cow, her father a pederast, and thinks of nothing but escaping from the island. Ariadne in love with Theseus; Icarus in love with Ariadne and tells her the secret of the thread; Ariadne tells it to Theseus in return for a promise of marriage. Theseus conspires with Phaedra to abandon her sister at Naxos, etc. A nice play, impossible to write because of the exhaustion I feel at the thought of my contemporaries’ extreme stupidity. The closer Orphée gets to the coast of Crete, the more clearly the play looms in my mind, and the more certain I am to give up – I have had enough of imbecile Europe.

Scenario: The journey of the twelve young men and the twelve maidens, taken to Crete to be “devoured by the Minotaur.” Endless journey, judging by ours. Atmosphere of a tuberculosis sanatorium. Since the monster is herbivorous, it is easy to see that the twelve maidens and twelve young men are destined to serve other appetites.

Jean Cocteau, Past/Tense the Cocteau Diaries Vol. 1

In this 1952 entry of Jean Cocteau’s diary, we get a glimpse of Cocteau’s thinking as he sails to Crete, bored and stuck on the yacht of his socialite patron. The yacht is having engine trouble because the swelling sea is forcing the engine to overwork. To compensate fighting the waves and keep the engine from overheating and causing major damage, it was necessary for the captain to stop the engine to allow it to cool, then move forward until it grew hot again. This necessary approach to saving the engine was causing an eight-hour jaunt to last nearly twice as long. To make the fitful journey less tedious, Cocteau begins to imagine a play based on the myth of the minotaur. Crete is the home of the mythological minotaur and for Cocteau it activates his imagination in the direction of the island’s most famous denizen.

What makes this particular passage from Cocteau’s diary singularly notable for me, is that in my copy an anonymous doodler drew a very competent illustration of the fabled minotaur Cocteau is referencing in his account of the day. The bull-headed monster is peeking out menacingly from behind the wall of the text block into the margin of the book. In the passage, Cocteau is managing a fairly coherent and irreverent outline of the play he has in mind. While the brief lines he writes are impertinent and charming, he has taken several artistic liberties with the accepted narrative of the myth. Unfortunately, he abruptly cuts off his reverie as he succumbs to his persistent frustration and anger at the human insistence on war and destruction. He is writing in his diary seven years after the end of WWII, and he is still outraged at the devastation and loss of human life caused by the war.

It would be quite a deviation for King Minos to fall in love with Theseus and perhaps a boon to gay storytelling, but the original myth gives a different take. Minos is a tyrant and quite smug about bringing mighty Athens to her knees. When he does spot the tall, handsome, and confident prince of Athens among the 14 newly arrived sacrifices to the minotaur (7 male and 7 female, not 24 as Cocteau asserts), Minos believes he has scored a coup against his enemy. As the victor of the war against Athens and as compensation and humiliation for the loss of his son in battle, Minos has ordered the brightest and most talented Athenian youth to be sent into the maze as sport and feed for the cannibalistic minotaur.

The minotaur itself was a product of the unholy union between Queen Pasiphaë, Minos’ wife and the sacred white bull Poseidon had sent to Crete as a sign that Minos was the true and able ruler of the island. Minos is the son of Europa who was seduced by Zeus in disguise as a white bull. To escape Hera’s jealous wrath over another of her husband’s infidelities, Zeus carries Europa off to the island of Crete where he safely marries her to King Asterion the ruler of the island. Europa already has had two other sons fathered by Zeus in addition to Minos. Understanding his duty to the mightiest of the gods, Asterion agrees to be their stepfather and wife of Europa.

Not being a true heir to the throne of Crete and in competition with his two other brothers, Minos asks Poseidon (the patron god of the island) to send a sign that he is the worthy ruler. Poseidon bargains with Minos, proffering a white bull (there is a theme here) rising out of the sea as the sign of Minos’ authority to the throne. There is a caveat, the miraculous white bull is presented as the asked for sign, but Poseidon has made it clear to Minos that it must be returned as a sacrifice in gratitude for the sign.

Upon seeing the white bull in the flesh, Minos becomes fascinated with its pristine color and its perfect form and decides to keep the bull and substitute a lesser animal for the sacrifice of thanks. Poseidon is neither fooled nor amused by Minos’ act of hubris. In retaliation for Minos’ covetousness of the sacred bull, Poseidon causes Queen Pasiphaë to develop an unnatural lust for the sacred white bull. A lust that is not satisfied until she mates with it.

From Queen Pasiphaë’s uncontrollable indiscretion is born the minotaur, a half bull, half human monster that craves human flesh. The minotaur is the physical manifestation of human greed, lust and hubris. When the gods make an agreement, a mortal cannot renege or change the terms of the agreement. The result will be ugly and dangerous.

Even though Queen Pasiphaë birthed a flesh-eating monster, she still harbored maternal feeling toward her progeny. She was never comfortable with Asterion (she named the beast after her father-in-law) being bull-faced and difficult to keep under control. Still, she was also acutely aware that the only reason that this brut of a child survived was because of its royal blood, and that it served Minos as a way to keep the conquered Athenians terrorized and under his oppression. In the outline of his unrealized play, Cocteau is correct that Queen Pasiphaë was angry at the imprisonment and treatment of her son, but she also understood that it was the only way to hide the royal abomination and keep the citizens of Crete safe from its cannibalistic nature.

Cocteau adds Phaedra into his minotaur drama. Phaedra is a daughter of King Minos and Queen Pasiphaë, but she is not featured in the minotaur myth at all. He is reusing a line from his 1949 play Rinaud et Armide that he found sharp and humorously vulgar that pares down her parent’s legacy. Calling Queen Pasiphaë a cow reduces her to the mating receptacle for the white bull. Accusing her father of pederasty aligns with ancient sources that accuse Crete under King Minos’ rule of inventing institutionalized pederasty. To control the population on an island with limited space, it is claimed by Aristotle* among others that Minos encouraged same sex relations between men, and to have embedded the practice into Cretan law. It is true that Phaedra, like her sister Ariadne, viewed their native island as more of a prison that they desperately wanted to escape from, than a paradise they hoped to rule.

Ariadne is the true love interest in the myth of the minotaur. It was she who set her sights on Theseus as soon as she saw him among the Athenian youth sacrifices. While his attractiveness, height, and confidence were appealing, it was his status as a prince that mostly caught Ariadne’s attention. She could be a princess in Athens, keep her rank, and leave the confines of her claustrophobic island. However, it was not Icarus as Cocteau would have it, who Ariadne went to for the solution to help Theseus maneuver the maze. It was his father Daedalus, the designer and builder of the maze who gave her the string that Theseus should drop behind him in order to trace his way back. As Mistress of the Entrance to the Maze, Ariadne had access to the human sacrifices. It was easy for her to slip the ball of string and a knife to Theseus. She did not do this out of pure love for Theseus. She made him promise to take her with him on his return to Athens and make her his queen. Besides being desperate to leave the confines of Crete and her tyrannical father, she understood that what she was doing was an act of treason. He father would not go easy on his daughter’s act of rebellion.

Theseus agreed to Ariadne’s demands, not because he returned her feelings of love, but because he needed Ariadne’s help to overcome the minotaur and release the hold Minos had on his people. In some ways he found Ariadne repellant. She was pushy and demanding. Additionally, she was purported to be a follower or even a priestess of Dionysus the god of wine, which in ancient times was often a euphemism for a lover of drink. So, Theseus used Ariadne’s ardor toward him to his advantage to navigate the maze and kill the minotaur to free Athens from the tyranny of Minos.

Although it may offer more intrigue than the original myth, Theseus did not conspire with Phaedra to abandon the irksome Ariadne on the island of Naxos as Cocteau imagines. Theseus was only too ready on his own to relieve himself from his empty vow to Ariadne. As agreed, and out of pity for her treason, Theseus took Ariadne with him as a passenger when he made his escape from Crete. Stopping at the safety of the island of Naxos for rest and supplies for the ship, the crew and passengers also celebrated escaping the horror of the minotaur. When it was time to set sail again and continue to Athens, Theseus took advantage of Ariadne’s deep, intoxicated slumber to leave the intolerable situation of Ariadne’s demands behind.

As a heroic figure, Theseus’ abandonment is difficult to justify. A prince as perfect in body, mind, and deed would never simply solve his dilemma of Ariadne by abandoning her in a foreign land. The storytellers offer reasonings that try to ease the offense of desertion. He was ordered by another god such as Dionysus or Athena to leave her behind, or bad weather while reboa#pashrding the ship prevented Theseus from getting her on board. Whatever the motivation, the usual ending is happy for Ariadne, she is found by the god Dionysus, and he marries her and she becomes cause for a “new constellation” when Dionysus throws her wedding crown into the sky. Of course, for the cynical this can also be interpreted that Ariadne become more of a drunkard after her abandonment and treachery by Theseus.

By adding the image of the minotaur as part of the Cocteau’s diary entry, the anonymous draftsperson brings not only a sense of the countenance of the half man – half bull monstrosity, but also how it may have terrorized the lost sacrificial youth by its lurking behind the next wall of the maze, by drawing him stepping out from behind the wall of text.

The minotaur is a symbol of all the fears and terrors we have when we navigate the unknown. It is a composite of all the imagined boogie men that we assume will thwart our progress as we try to move forward in life. We never know what we will encounter in the dark halls of fate or how we will vanquish the demons we are sure to find there as we grope our way to the center where the reward is supposed to lay. We cannot rely on a string to backtrack out of the maze, because life only moves forward. Our confidence and bravery may fail us in our attempts to inch our advance into the unknown. We have no Ariadne to goad us into the darkness. We may succumb to the minotaur at any turn, but there is no way but onward into the maze.

*Aristotle, The Politics, Book II, Chapter 10 (Bekker numbering 1272a 22–24).

Arthur Bruso © 2026

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Leading the Ox

Stele of the Overseer of the Fortress Intef; c. 2000 – 1988 BC; Limestone; 30 11/16"h. x 55 7/8"w x 3 3/8"d; Metropolitan Museum of Art

I am one unique to his lord, free of disorder, who sets speech so that it is correct, who knows how to speak, who uses choice expressions, who sees far off, who plans for the future, who knows where to stand in the king’s house. From the inscription.

The Stele of the Overseer of the Fortress Intef

Intef was an important official of King Mentuhotep II of the 11^th dynasty who ruled c. 2040 – 2009 BC. Through Mentuhotep II’s power and strategy, he reunited the kingdoms of Upper and Lower Egypt after over a century of rebellion. Intef, was installed by the conquering king as the Overseer (or a General in modern terms) in the northern Egyptian city of Herakleopolis (called Henen-Nsut in ancient Egypt – Child of the King). Herakleopolis had been the capitol city and home of the Upper Egyptian kings. Intef was the official sent there by the King to ensure that the defeated citizens remained loyal to their new King Mentuhotep II, and that the Upper and Lower kingdoms remained united in one Egypt.

Because Intef was an important, high ranking official, but not royalty, he did not have the lineage of the gods like most Egyptian kings. With no hereditary status of King and God, when he died, Intef was not allowed a royal burial in a monolithic structure like a pyramid, or entombment in highly guarded and secret networks like The Valley of the Kings. Intef’s interment was sanctioned by the King for entombment within a saff tomb. A saff tomb resembles a modern family mausoleum. It was often modest in size, cut into a rock face with several other rock cut rooms in linear progression. These additional rooms would be used for the burials of family members or other high-ranking officials as needed. These burial niches were hidden behind a mud brick structure with a portico for shelter and a ceremonial false door or ka door. The ka door is the magical access point between the spirit world and the living. All communications and offerings for the dead would be left here, and the spiritual servants would access them for the deceased. Public steles were mounted under the portico, each identifying and commemorating the official or family member who was interred in the tomb.

The tomb of Intef the Overseer present day. Intef's tomb would be to the left of the ka door. Right: A detail of the ka door as it exists in present day.

By all official accounts and by the inscription on his stele, Intef was excellent at his job at keeping peace in Herakleopolis and much favored by the King. At his death this stele was installed as a public monument on his tomb. It is more than just an inscription commemorating Intef’s loyalty to the king and honoring his proficiency in his duties, it is also a powerful magic spell to ensure that Intef will be provided for for all eternity. Its power was activated by the authority and blessing bestowed upon the carving and the burial place itself by the King and his unlimited power and authority as a God on Earth.

Map of the site of Intef the Overseer's tomb. Intef's tomb chamber is upper left.

On the left of the stele is a depiction of Intef and his wife Iti. Iti is shown sitting behind Intef.* Her placement and smaller stature reveal her slightly lesser status and dependence on her husband. Her affection for Intef is demonstrated by the placement of her arm around her husband, with her fingers shown clasping his left shoulder in a gesture of intimacy. They are both sitting on a bench held up with legs carved in the shape of lion’s paws. The paws symbolize their power as the local rulers appointed by the king.

Intef holds a sacred lotus to his nose. The lotus blossom was considered by ancient Egyptians to be where the sun god Ra was manifested from the primordial chaos. As the beauty of the lotus grows from the undifferentiated mud of the Nile so the beauty and power of Ra was manifested from chaos. As a symbol of resurrection and transformation, it indicates that Intef has passed through the trials of death and has been reborn with his spiritual senses rejuvenated and is now able to experience all the wonders the underworld has to offer.

Iti is holding a closed lotus bud which informs the viewer that she still remains among the living. Behind her sits her cosmetic box indicating that she is ready and prepared to join her husband when it is her time. Under the bench rests a dog waiting and resting as a symbol of Intef’s loyalty to King Mentuhotep II. The dog’s presence signifies peace, security and the restoration of order and more pragmatically Intef’s wish to bring his faithful companion with him into the next life.

Next to the couple is a table piled with all the food, equipment, and household goods that Intef will need to prosper in the afterlife. All is presented in perfect order on a reed mat (the knife-like shapes at the bottom of the pile) visually signaling that the deceased lived a life of cosmic truth and would sustain that divine order in the afterlife.

The last two rows under the inscription on the bottom right are carved images of servants and assistants who Intef will need to sustain his status and welfare in the afterlife. The figure leading an ox in the bottom row raised my curiosity because his representation was in marked contrast to the formal Egyptian rule of depicting figures in strict profile. This oddly presented figure is the herdsman. In life he lived in the desert tending his herd of cattle. His devotion to his job and his master is shown by his thinness and his weathered physique. It was the herdsman’s job to care for the cattle for the overseer, which also meant that his excellent care to his charges would be at the expense of his own well-being.

The ox is an indicator of extreme wealth and military nobility. As an ox (a castrated bull), is spiritually clean making it the highest acceptable sacrifice that can be offered to the gods. This renders it an exceptionally noble and special gift.

Herdsman leading the ox on the Stele of the Overseer Intef

At the end of the procession is the lone women. She balances a jar (some say a loaf of bread) on her head. It is she who is the symbolic attendant for Iti, and who will assure that all the domestic needs will be met for Intef in the afterlife and later for Iti when she joins her husband.

Female servant at the end of the procession.

This entire relief is perfectly balanced between the hieroglyphic text and the imagery. In Egyptian art the major figures of status are always larger than all the less noble figures. Intef and Iti occupy the greatest space in the composition, second to the magic spell that manifests the stele’s magic. The attendants and servants are diminutive and form a visually smaller role in the composition, yet their presence is the reason for the magic. Without the attendants providing their necessary tasks, Intef’s life in the underworld would not be possible.

These necessary attendants and their tasks include, giving the water of libation to cleanse Intef for the afterlife; the ka- priest to take care of Intef’s soul at death and to continue caring for it for eternity; a maker of incense; an embalmer to prepare Intef’s body so that it is preserved for the afterlife; the lector priest performing the offering that the king gives – this is the high priest who under the divine authority of the King recites aloud the  magic words at the tomb and activates the magic that the stele will make possible; a servant carrying a haunch of meat for the offering table; a servant carrying a tray of figs to the offering table; a servant carrying an offering of ducks; the herdsman leading the sacred ox; a servant carrying an offering of geese; a servant carrying a tray of delicacies to the offering table; a servant carrying an offering of a bouquet of papyrus flowers; the woman servant who insures the continuation of the domestic household.

This stele is more than a depiction of ancient Egyptian upper-class domesticity. It is an assurance that the entombed Intef will be provided for and honored for his eternity in the afterlife as he was during his earthly life. It has been sanctified by the God King, activated by the lector priest, and placed in public on the wall of the Intef’s tomb for all who pass by to see and to understand how important he was and venerated he is. In this prominent position the stele will perform its magic of protection and abundance as long as time exists.

* Due to the constraints of the Ancient Egyptian concept of perspective, Iti appears to be sitting behind Intef. In reality, she would be sitting beside her husband.

Arthur Bruso © 2026

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Another Master

A review of the Prime of Life by Simone de Beauvoir

When we discover that our icons conduct their daily affairs and relationships with the same contradictions and messy abandon that we lesser mortals do, there is not the relief that we are all the same, but rather the disillusionment that even our idols make mistakes. This was my reaction after reading Simone de Beauvoir’s autobiography The Prime of Life.

The Prime of Life is the second installment of de Beauvoir’s series of autobiographies. This volume begins in 1929, with the 21-year-old de Beauvoir freshly graduated from the University of Paris. She had already established her lifelong association with Sartre and moved out of her parents’ house. She rented a room from her grandmother in the city of Paris, where she finally felt freedom from the constraints of her immediate family. This arrangement did not entirely sever her family ties, but her grandmother allowed her the independence to come and go freely. That there would be an understanding of propriety and a level of reportage from the grandmother to de Beauvoir’s parents should her behavior warrant it was assumed. Still, de Beauvoir felt independent and took full advantage of the lack of obvious constraints.

Having graduated and taken the teaching exams at university, she secured a part time position at Lycée Victor Durvy and supplemented her income with some private tutoring. This light working schedule gave her much time to explore Paris and its pleasures as well as reestablish her association with Sartre. And it was Sartre to whom she was most excited to spend her time. It should be explained that de Beauvoir wrote about meeting Sartre in university in her first memoir, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter. One of the difficulties of reading The Prime of Life is de Beauvoir structured her memoirs with the intention that the reader would read them all in order. Therefore, she does not summarize or repeat information that was presented in previous volumes. This can cause confusion for those who attempt to read her memoirs as stand-alone works.

De Beauvoir encountered Sartre at university when they were both taking their final exams. She had been introduced to Sartre by a mutual friend. After hearing Sartre’s own philosophical rejection of the bourgeois, she believed that she had found an intellectual match who shared her devotion to freedom. Sartre was not immune to de Beauvoir’s attractiveness. He also found in her a peer who shared his philosophy. He understood that she equaled his intellectual brilliance; however, he was also quick to tell her she needed coaching. They each considered the other as a true soul connection in terms of an essential love rather than something determined by fate. Essential love was a term that Satre coined for the benefit of de Beauvoir. By naming Simone and his relationship with her as essential, he was convincing her that they had a special, unbreakable bond. As he explained, this did not exclude the exploration of other romantic interests for either of them, since they retained their independence and were thwarting the bourgeoisie. Sartre called these extraneous liaisons “contingent.”

De Beauvoir’s rejection of the French bourgeois society she was born into had its roots in her family’s financial failings. Her family had lost their fortune during WWI when the grandfather’s bank collapsed due to bad speculations and the fraud to cover them up. This resulted not only in financial ruin for the family, but also in a social scandal that would follow the various members of the family for years. Trying to regain their financial status resulted in a further series of failed investments all of which reduced Simone’s family to genteel poverty. While they might claim their inherited bourgeois social position, they could not provide the dowery necessary for Simone to marry within her station. Instead, she was encouraged by her father to pursue an education that would provide Simone with the means to find work and become self-sufficient. This further alienated her from early twentieth century French society, since a working woman was viewed as unseemly and a violation of the social code adhered to by the bourgeois. This antiquated social expectation de Beauvoir’s was born into, expected an eligible woman to be educated in the social graces and home management, not to attend university and seek employment to earn their living. Simone decided to reject the constraints of the bourgeois in defiance of a social code she could not be part of and was rejecting her. She was reaffirmed in her repudiation of the bourgeois by the plight of her friend Zaza. Zaza was being compelled into a union that was profitable for her family but repugnant to her. Before this alliance could be legalized, she fell ill with viral encephalitis and died at 21. De Beauvoir blamed the psychological stress for her friend’s fatal illness and was convinced that bourgeois society was a murderous engine of conformity designed to constrain a women’s freedom.

After having been found and chosen by Sartre, de Beauvoir abandoned her cherished independence and freedom by allowing Sartre to dictate the parameters of their relationship. In effect, she trades the misogyny of her father and the restrictions of bourgeois society for the misogyny and restrictions of Sartre. It was Sartre who decided that they would never marry. Instead, that they would enjoy “contingent” loves, and that they would continue to spurn the bourgeois that turned their backs on them. This all seems suspiciously self-serving for Sartre. Sartre lost nothing in this arrangement. As a man, with greater freedom of choice, his status and social standing would not be affected. De Beauvoir was well aware that she was the one who would suffer the most from Sartre’s pact. She endeavored to explain the inequities of Sartre’s plan, but he rejected her rationalizations as dated and cowardly. De Beauvoir accepted Sartre’s terms for a relationship not only because she viewed him as the intellectual superior but because it aligned with her desire to escape the constraints of the bourgeois. She bought into his concept of perfect freedom regardless of the glaring flaws because it defined an ideal she hoped for. Still, de Beauvoir’s acceptance of Sartre’s dictum seems out of character for a woman who advocated for the disassembling of a similar traditional chauvinistic bias and envisioned a new radical future for women. Yet yielding to his authority by allowing him to dictate the rules of their association would serve her future in other ways.

This is what makes the reading of The Prime of Life so infuriating. Through de Beauvoir’s own telling, she, time after time acquiesces to the will of Sartre even when she internally questions his authority. She relates a conversation they had regarding the existence of microorganisms. Sarte argued vigorously against the actuality of a microscopic world that had the ability to affect human life. Sartre’s premise was that something cannot truly exist unless it is directly perceived and given meaning by human consciousness. De Beauvoir tolerated these wild counter scientific arguments of Sartre’s as part of his cognitive machinery. She rationalized that they allowed for his greater and broader theories of human freedom.

De Beauvoir’s acceptance of his arguments seemed more than likely a way to avoid opposing Sartre, risking alienation, and losing access to his self-declared golden brain. De Beauvoir gained world-renowned status being the companion to the individual who was considered the greatest genius in mid-century France. Her pride in his designation and her need to retain her secondary position at his side becomes more obvious as the book goes on. De Beauvoir knew that as a woman navigating a deeply sexist society, she would face an impossible uphill battle against closed patriarchal institutions trying to access the global intellectual mainstream entirely on her own. By anchoring her life to Sartre, she gained immediate entry into the absolute vanguard of cultural, political, and literary life.

Sartre decided for de Beauvoir that she must become a writer. De Beauvoir had youthful ideas about becoming an author, but she described herself as too indolent (page 52, Prime of Life). When faced with the blank page, she found nothing worthwhile to say and little motivation. She was indifferent to writing about the past because there was no reason to relive it. With these rationalizations against writing, she decided silence was best. Except Sartre had no tolerance for idleness, a condition he relegated to the bourgeois. He ordered de Beauvoir to write because she needed to open her eyes to the manifest glories of life. Under his directive she did.

Her approach to writing her autobiography was phenomenological. Taking her instruction from Sartre’s existentialism lexicon, she presented her life through her actual, sensory lived experiences. Her aim was to capture the exact feeling of her existence as she had lived it. She was determined not to present herself in a stereotypical feminine way which she perceived as emotional and romantic. As a result, The Prime of Life is dense with detail. Using her diaries as source material, de Beauvoir describes the minutia of all her experiences, from the clothing her companions wore, to the decorations in the café’s she frequented, to the practically word for word retelling of various conversations she was part of. This insistence on her philosophy of the self as something chosen and constructed, becomes a test of endurance for the reader.

In the Introduction de Beauvoir explains that she will not attempt to explain or justify Sartre’s philosophy because only he can discuss his ideas with any authority. Then continuously throughout her book, she does exactly that; she explains and rationalizes Sartre’s philosophical ideas in an attempt to justify her decisions to follow his lead and his orders. She tries heroically to convince her readers that she is maintaining her autonomy and is freeing herself from the constraints of her bourgeois upbringing by her association with someone whose star she believes is on the ascendent. Sartre’s star is on the ascendent, but he needs someone to do his unpleasant, tedious tasks for him – including finding him nubile women for intimate assignations as part of his idea of contingent relationships. Through her teaching, de Beauvoir had access to young women. If de Beauvoir discussed one she found interesting with Sartre, he would, under the guise of psychological material to be analyzed, encourage de Beauvoir to allow him to meet her and have them join and form a trio. If she hesitated, he would weaponize Simone’s jealousy as the enemy of freedom. And for her troubles she permanently lost her teaching license.

The Prime of Life is enlightening not for the window into the life of the youthful de Beauvoir starting out on her journey as the premier feminist of her age, but of a young woman who becomes infatuated with a charismatic young man and decides that he is who she will align herself with despite his problematic personality. It offers an account of an intelligent, educated woman who trades the very independence she decided was her right and hands it over to a man. Perhaps she would not be the immortal we now know if she had not, but regardless of her lengthy and verbose rationalizations, she compromised her own freedom to be in that place beside the towering Sartre. To be the second most admired intellectual in France was an achievement that de Beauvoir was proud to have accomplished.

Jean-Paul Sartre (left), Simone de Beauvoir (right)

Arthur Bruso © 2026

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