'The emotional and intellectual birth pangs of a fascinating woman' - Time
In her memoirs, Simone de Beauvoir created a remarkable portrait of a twentieth-century woman's struggle for independence.
In Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter she describes her early life, from her birth in Paris, 1908, to her student days at the Sorbonne, where she met Jean-Paul Sartre - 'the dream companion I had longed for since I was fifteen'. Full of the most intimate detail and a true sense of discovery, it is a revealing account of her early development as a writer through her initial acceptance and then courageous defiance of the social conventions of her bourgeois family and calss. An inspirational and often controversial figure, Simone de Beauvoir remains a powerful icon of early feminism.
