She Came to Stay     by Simone De Beauvoir, Translated by R Senhouse and Y Moyse Original title: L’Invitée Original language: French Published by Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc. Pub. Date: 1999 Format: Paperback Dimensions: (in inches): 0.75 x 7.96 x 5.37 ISBN: 0393318842 List Price: $14.00, £9.90 Buy online from Amazon.co.uk for £9.90 Buy online from Amazon.com for $11.20 Published by Fontana Pub. Date: 1982 Pub. Place: UK Not available for ordering Published by Flamingo Pub. Date: 1984 Pub. Place: UK List Price: £6.99 Not available for ordering

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She Came To Stay derives its inspiration from Simone de Beauvoir’s unique and rather convoluted relationship with her lifelong companion Jean-Paul Sartre. In this novel, de Beauvoir evokes the complex texture of polygamous love for a couple for whom ‘it’s impossible to talk about faithfulness where we are concerned’. Françoise and Pierre, the novel’s protagonists, are mirror images of herself and Sartre respectively; their motto being: ‘You and I are simply one. That is the truth, you know. Neither of us can be described without the other.’


The narrative unfolds with the presence of Xavière, a young relative of Françoise, who has an enticing effect on the theatre director Pierre. Together they encourage Xavière to take up an apprenticeship with Pierre’s drama group. At first Françoise perceives herself as the engineer of this risky endeavour, ‘handing’ her defenseless cousin over to Pierre, for ‘Xavière’s gestures, her face, her very life depended on her (Françoise) for their existence. Xavière, here and now... was no more than the flavour of the coffee, than the piercing music of the dance, no more than indeterminate well-being ...’ But as the story progresses, Xavière increasingly fails to correspond to Françoise’s secret view of her as a play object for Pierre. The novel takes a sudden turn when Xavière, ‘like a child who mixes up all the cards when it sees it’s loosing the game’, rebels against the ‘whole fate’ laid out for her and Françoise, slowly but surely, loses control of what had begun as her conspiracy.


She Came To Stay abounds with psychologically driven undertones. In the latter part, Françoise comes to grips with her self-imposed condition of ‘being nothing at all.’ Through her juvenile antics Xavière manages to assert herself as a being with ‘a definite place in the world, and Pierre turned to her with passionate interest.’ While Françoise’s inability to be herself, manifested in tacitly submitting to Xavière’s infantile schemes, had left her behind, ‘separated from him (Pierre), separated from everyone and without a link with herself; neglected and finding in this true abandonment no true aloneness.’


Rooted in feminine sensibility, She Came To Stay harbours considerable insights. In her meticulous depiction of a love triangle, de Beauvoir poignantly applies existentialist philosophy to a real life example. Writing autobiographically through the character of Françoise, de Beauvoir speaks from her own experience and perhaps the most important lesson wrought from her own pain is that ‘being for oneself’ in the existentialist sense is not a given but a condition to be constantly earned and reassessed.

‘Suddenly the fog in Françoise’s head lifted; she saw clearly what lay between herself and Pierre; they had built beautiful, faultless structures in whose shadow they were sheltering, without giving any further thought to what lay behind them — Pierre still repeated «We are but one,» but now she had discovered that he lived only for himself. Without losing its perfect form, their love, their life, was slowly losing its substance, like those huge, apparently invulnerable cocoons, whose soft integument yet conceals microscopic worms that painstakingly consume them.’ p165-6