Catching up on Classics (and lots more!) discussion

The A Very Easy Death by Simone de Beauvoir is our December 2023 Short Story/Novella Read.

This discussion will open on December 1

Beware Short Story Discussions will have Spoilers

Starting today. It was hard to find an e-copy of the book. Read a few pages, so far a good intro.

"Thinking against oneself often bears fruit, but with my mother, it was another question again – she lived against herself. She had appetites in plenty: she spent all her strength in repressing them and she underwent this denial in anger. In her childhood her body, her heart and her mind had been squeezed into an armour of principles and prohibitions. She had been taught to pull the laces hard and tight herself. A full-blooded, spirited woman lived on inside her, but a stranger to herself, deformed and mutilated."

This just hit me! Such a beautiful narration of a woman's tormented life.

Anjali, completely agree! - her description of her mother's character is both heartbreakingly perceptive and empathetic. The social environment and belief structures that the mother grew up in didn't allow for her deepest wishes and gifts, and the natural frustations came out as destructive behaviors that it would be normal for any daughter to resent. But De Bouvoir's ability to piece together what she believes caused it allows her to write from a place of clarity and empathy rather than judgement. I don't know if her mother would have agreed with her portrayal or not, but it definitely feels like an honest attempt to understand and to come to terms with their past. And it does ring true, for me anyway.

De Bouvoir has her own theoretical positions of course. But she is not just crushing things into set theories so they fit; it feels rather like an attempt to understand.

Also in the descriptions of the illness and the behavior of her mother's medical professionals, so many things are instantly recognizable to anyone who has gone through a protracted illness with a loved one. The descriptions are crushingly effective. My heart aches at what she went through . . . and what all of us will eventually go through in one way or another.

When the nurse uses the phrase "a very easy death," it made me cry. It becomes savagely ironic, with the blow by blow account of what ahe has gone through in the past 60 pages. But it's also true, in that it could have been so much worse, without the mother's resources as De Bouvoir says later.

What a book!

Greg wrote: "When the nurse uses the phrase "a very easy death," it made me cry. It becomes savagely ironic, with the blow by blow account of what ahe has gone through in the past 60 pages. But it's also true, in that it could have been so much worse, without the mother's resources as De Bouvoir says later."

I absolutely loved the book. It's an eye-opening piece.

Yes, Greg, I agree. It also hurts to know what torture we put them through but it's too late to change. I loved the introspection part of the author, about why she let this happen. It's a moral quandary ignited by societal pressure and the inability to let go.
It's kind of sad that euthanasia is still illegal in many countries.

I think this author's work is quite different to the only other work I have read of hers and that is "The Second Sex." That said, I found the story to be very poignant and certainly gives one a lot to think about. It also reminded me of some of the books by Annie Ernaux, a fellow countrywoman of hers, and I would like to know if it was only me who was reminded of it.

Completely agree Gonza, it's so different than The Second Sex!

I suppose that's maybe because the subject is so personal? Her thinking (especially in the second part) seems very intellectually consistent with themes that come up in her other work (such as her ideas about conventional marriage) and very consistent with her existentialist approach as well. What could be more existentialist after all than grappling with the inevitability of death and mortality? But here in this book, the theories are secondary rather than primary; it's not abstract at all.

I haven't read Annie Ernaux unfortunately so I have no idea about that part. :)

I struggled with this short book. Experiencing this slow slide into death hit a bit close to home. Maman's death wasn't easy in my view although it could have been much worse. She suffered in some ways with the pain from bed sores at the end and her inability to move into a comfortable position. It's as well that she was unaware that she was rotting away. It is so hard to see one's loved one slowly dying and wanting there to be no pain, and it was so clear that De Beauvoir and her sister agonized over watching their mother during her last few weeks. One statement from the book fit my mother-in-law exactly during her last months of life in my home. " A hard task, dying, when one loves life so much."

This was the surprise hit of the month for me. The comparison to Annie Ernaux is spot on but the novella also struck me as a very valid contribution to existential literature which I had not seen mentioned in comments about the work. If we look at de Beauvoir as the existential hero of the piece, the role of the mother becomes more interesting in comparison, when considering how tenets of the movement are seen in relation to both.

Anjali wrote: "It's kind of sad that euthanasia is still illegal in many countries...."

There is a world map in Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthanasia

Very, very few have active voluntary euthanasia legal. We have a debate going on here after a husband gave his 81-year old wife (married for 50 year) a lethal dose. The story is almost like Beauvoir just with two people in it. She had final stage Parkinson. No language any-more. He had multiple cancers one of them spreading. He was afraid that he would die first.

He gave her a lethal dose on the 26th of December in her care home. Drove home, wrote letters and took a dose himself. His is discovered, brought to the hospital, given anti-dose. Brough back to life and not – I am not kidding – now stands accused for murder.

Link to new story (in English):
https://www-dr-dk.translate.goog/nyhe...

Reminds me a lot of
The Death of Ivan Ilyich and
How the Poor Die

It must have been quite a provocation at the time with such a lengthy and detailed text on “what cannot be talked about”.

Women not being allowed to know they had cancer. Brutal for all parts.

I discovered during reading how engrossed I was, when Sartre is mentioned, and I was surprised. Like “Sartre went down with me; he took me in a taxi as far as the nursing-home.” and it feels like out of place name dropping – bit of course it isn’t.

I loved this one:
“The world had shrunk to the size of her room: when I crossed Paris in a taxi I saw nothing more than a stage with extras walking about on it.”
A very sharp description of the bobble you walk in when feeling-fatigued.

Sam wrote: "This was the surprise hit of the month for me. The comparison to Annie Ernaux is spot on but the novella also struck me as a very valid contribution to existential literature which I had not seen m..."

Sam, completely agree about the existentialism part and how it's interesting to look at the book with that philosophy in mind.

Greg wrote: "Sam wrote: "This was the surprise hit of the month for me. The comparison to Annie Ernaux is spot on but the novella also struck me as a very valid contribution to existential literature which I ha..."

Yes,, the story also increased my appeciation of Simone de Beauvoir and prompted me to seek more of her fiction.