As a frequent charity shop patron, I’ve picked up a lot of books along the way. I'm usually drawn to classics, vintage hardbacks, and any titles I see pop up on my Instagram feed. By now, most of my book collection is second-hand. 

Eleri Rice

As a frequent charity shop patron, I’ve picked up a lot of books along the way. I’m usually drawn to classics, vintage hardbacks, and any titles I see pop up on my Instagram feed. By now, most of my book collection is second-hand. 

A few weeks ago, while having a look around a charity shop, I stumbled across The Woman Destroyed by Simone De Beauvoir. I read De Beauvoir’s most well-known work, The Second Sex around a year ago and loved it. So, this book jumped out at me as soon as I saw the author’s name on the cover. Plus, for only £2, I couldn’t leave it behind.

Charity Shop Feminist Finds

I would say that Simone De Beauvoir is a well-known author, especially among those interested in or studying humanities subjects such as languages, philosophy, and social sciences. The introduction states that at the time of this edition of The Woman Destroyed, Simone De Beauvoir was Europe’s leading woman novelist. This book was first published in 1967 in French, under the title La Femme Rompue, and then later in English in 1969.

“The lack of punctuation makes for a really messy and unpredictable read, representative of her emotional state.”

In contrast to De Beauvoir’s more widely-known feminist, theoretical, and philosophical non-fiction, this fictional novel is organized into three stories. The stories are centred around three middle-aged women who all face an unexpected crisis.

An in-depth review

In the first story, The Age of Discretion, a woman feels betrayed by her son and shuts him out completely. As well as this, she realises that she no longer brings her husband any joy and that their passion has dissolved. A story of isolation, complex emotions, and uncertainty unfolds as she navigates these relationships, and she struggles to arrive at a resolution.

The second story and the shortest, The Monologue explores the grief and loneliness of another middle-aged woman. Told through a stream of consciousness, the protagonist reveals that her husband has left her. Afterwards, she describes her daughter’s death and the smells reminding her of her funeral.

This is a heartwrenching story about grief, jealousy, and despair. The narrator is given space to express her emotions in an unladylike manner, thus subverting notions about the way women “should” process grief. The lack of punctuation makes for a really messy and unpredictable read, representative of her emotional state.

The last story, The Woman Destroyed, tells the tale of a woman whose life is flipped upside down when her husband has an affair. It is written in the form of diary entries taking place over a few months.

The protagonist has grown distant from her two grown-up daughters, yet still worries about them. She refuses to work or else she believes she wouldn’t have time for her loved ones. When she turns to her friends, they provide poor advice encouraging her to allow the affair to take its course. No matter how much she despairs of her life situation, she feels trapped.

Worth A Browse, Worth A Read

“It feels validating to hear women, fictional or otherwise, embrace their full range of emotions.”

These stories are so much more than just sad stories. Each one succeeds in describing the nuanced challenges of growing older for women. They also dive into the complexities of close relationships and the suffering that they can bring. What makes Simone De Beauvoir’s writing so good is her ability to depict the most common emotions that women experience with such acuteness.

Anger, grief, hopelessness, and loneliness are what unite the women in these stories. Especially for female readers, these stories ring true in a painfully real way. It must be noted that there are instances of outdated language and ideas in her writing, but these are reflective of her era.

These tales are comforting and relatable. It feels validating to hear women, fictional or otherwise, embrace their full range of emotions.

If I hadn’t been having a mooch around a charity shop that day, perhaps I never would have picked up this perspective-shifting book. I encourage you to switch out your next Waterstones trip with a visit to the charity shop instead. You never know, you might come across a hidden gem.

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Featured image courtesy of Ed Robertson on Unsplash. No changes were made to this image. Image licence can be found here.

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