Beyond the Margins: the Off-modern in the writings of Simone de Beauvoir and Violette Leduc.

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In light of four key republished, posthumous, and previously overlooked works by French authors Simone de Beauvoir and Violette Leduc, this project re-evaluates these authors' depictions of female friendship, identity and sexuality through a new critical lens: theorist Svetlana Boym's concept the 'off-modern', providing an original intervention into Beauvoir-Leduc scholarship. The 'off-modern' reconsiders writings about 'unconventional' women's relationships/subjectivity, less as 'outlandish', but rather offering up new ways of understanding how women experience their selfhoods. My critical re-examination of literary/philosophical intra-female bonds changes scholarly understanding of Beauvoir-Leduc, by showing the wider philosophical significance of writings previously considered personal/off-limits to scholars. This research proposes a new examination of female subjectivity, sexuality, and friendship in Simone de Beauvoir and Violette Leduc's writings, exploring ethical and aesthetic questions about intra-female relationships (e.g., childhood/adulthood/posthumous). Little scholarship exists on the posthumous primary texts, which are semi-autobiographical writings, respectively relating to Beauvoir and Leduc's intensely intimate girlhood friendships. Due to (self-)censorship in the 1950s, 'Thérèse et Isabelle' (Leduc) was only published in 2000 and 'Les Inséparables' (Beauvoir) in 2020. With the release of new publications e.g. Beauvoir's 'Lettres d'amitié', republications e.g. Leduc's 'Trésors à prendre', and current LGBTQ+ and feminist writings on Beauvoir (by Manon Garcia, Édouard Louis and Caroline Criado-Perez), these authors are rapidly gaining (reclaiming for Beauvoir) public-academic attention. A study is urgently required into this new material as it illustrates a more complex image of the authors' understanding of 'womanhood' and contributes to our comprehension of 'womanhood' today. My analysis begins through Svetlana Boym's interpretative theory, the 'off-modern', which explores the philosophical in the 'everyday'. Boym's off-modern theory is invaluable since it evaluates 'feminine' friendships, intimacy and perspectivism in censored or marginalised stories from a 21st-century female viewpoint. It therefore is indispensable for revealing detailed insight on our authors' intimate texts, allowing us to better understand their positions on and expressions of subjectivity, previously hidden through censorship. The chosen texts are significant as they address women's subjectivity/relationships in a complementary and revelatory manner. My reading redresses blindspots in criticism, and reconsiders our standpoint of the authors. Chapter 1 analyses intimate childhood friendships through the self/Other duality. This shifts scholarship's focus from the clichéd Beauvoir-Sartre binary onto a Simone-Zaza pairing (Zaza was Beauvoir's childhood friend) and reassesses Thérèse-Isabelle's censored relationship, thus uncovering unconventional intimate friendships that 'linger in margins' (Jefferson 2016). Chapter 2 explores how narrative perspectives alter the authors' perceptions of their selfhood in LB/MJFR through depictions of the past e.g., the Other becoming a past-self. These autobiographies illuminate the authors' changing relationships with women as their subjectivity shifts through time. Chapter 3 examines how the authors' selfhood and relationships transform when travelling as they encounter new situations/people. TP/AJJ offer new findings on Beauvoir and Leduc's considerations of how subjectivity relates to space.