- 55 - ADOPTION: A FEMINIST MOTIF IN GEORGE SAND AND SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR? ANNABELLE M. REA OCCIDENTAL COLLEGE In her celebrated 1975 essay, "Le Rire de la Méduse,” ~ which first appeared in a volume of atticles on Simone de Beauvoir .- Héléne Cixous uses the phrase “faire sauter la famille. Cixous was referring to the U.S.A. at the time of her writing and not to either George Sand or Simone de Beauvoir, but the idea of exploding the family, as one might translate “faire sauter la famille," or, closer to Cixous's intentions, undermining the family, has suggestive implications for my subject of adoption. . Both George Sand and Simone de Beauvoir saw the need for greater choice in women's lives. Both reinvented women's roles; both criticized social structures. Both suffered public condemnation for their own choices of life style, and both were censored by the Catholic Church, which placed their works on the Index.2 Both also used adoption as a means of reconfiguring the family. We might, in fact, immediately, without further discussion, term Sand and Beauvoir “feminist” because of this use of adoption alone for, as Barrie Thorne puts it in her introductory essay to Rethinking the Family, "Feminists have sought to dislodge beliefs that any specific family arrangement is natural, biological, or “functional” in a timeless way."3 George Sand, an avid social reformer throughout her lengthy and prolific writing career, concentrated on reform of the family unit. As she put it in her 1845 novel Le Meunier d'Angibault, “nous pouvons encore quelque chose pour la famille, tandis que pour 'humanité, 4 moins d'étre trés-riches, nous ne pouvons rien encore" (141).4 Adoption constituted a major, frequently used tactic in Sand's strategy for change. The most striking example of adoption in Sand's work masked its explosive nature through its disguise as a children's story or fairy tale. A young wife and mother comes upon a seemingly retarded foundling child unable to express himself, unable to relate "normally" to other human beings. After years of caretaking, she develops that unpromising lump of a child into an intelligent, articulate and strong, yet tender and nurturing young man. Mothers of sons raise future husbands, to be sure, but this mother, in a reversal of the Pygmalion and Galatea motif, has, it turns out, raised her own androgynous future husband. And, of course, you recognize the basic plot of Sand's 1850 novel Frangois le Champi. What | have only realized in preparing this study, © however, is that Sand's tale was not radical merely in a symbolic way. The novel records no formal legal procedure of adoption. However, by suggesting that Madeleine had officially become Frangois's mother, Sand had quite literally broken every law in the book. Let me outline the Civil Code's adoption law in effect at the time: --the adopter had to be at least fifty years old --he or she could have no other child at the time of the adoption --the age difference between adopter and adoptee had to be at least fifteen years --the adoptee could not be a minor --and, most importantly, marriage between the adopter and adoptee was strictly forbidden A somewhat earlier, much less well known work of Sand's treats adoption in a less radical manner. | have chosen the 1846 novel /sidora because it presents a number of interesting parallels with Simone de Beauvoir's L'invitée.” In both novels, the protagonists -- Isidora and Frangoise ~- show painful efforts toward self-understanding, as they experience strained relations with others. Both heroines write about themselves. Both choose to rescue -- and here |- 56 - underline the etymology of adoption as ad + optor choose, as well as the psychological analysis of those who see adoption as a desire to rescue 8 -- both choose to rescue motherless adolescent females 9 Because of this shared characteristic of adoption of a female by a female, | propose to examine the two works in the light of science fiction writer Joanna Russ's definition of a feminist text: "The crucial test of feminism in a work is the presence of at least two women who are friendly. Not one and not two who are rivals. . .."10 Adoption occurs late in Sand's novel. The first four-fifths of the text tells the story of the eponymous character who will become the adoptive mother. As a poor but ambitious sixteen- year-old, Isidora began her career as a courtesan, subjecting men who then imprison her and bestow upon her luxurious gifts. We see her, for instance, enclosed in a city garden, where she is one object of her keeper's collection, along with exotic birds and flowers. After marriage to a count, widowhood, and a painful affair with a man supportive of women but who loves another, Isidora begins a long and arduous quest for self-knowledge, which ends with the heroine alone in a vast and open garden in Italy, reigning over herself, finally in harmony with the etymology of her name, which comes from Isis, the goddess of nature. She has realized -- to paraphrase Mary Wollstonecraft -- that power over oneself is vastly superior to power over men,!! and she is ready to take over from the male narrator with her epistolary autobiography.! 2 As a wealthy widow, enjoying therefore the only autonomy available to women under the Napoleonic Code, Isidora no longer receives gifts; instead, she makes a series of gifts to those around her. And we come to the second element of her name:doron, or “gift” in Greek. 13 Isidora donates her sculptures and paintings to the public. She founds a sort of Voltairian village for the poor of the region, and she gives a job to a young orphan, the sixteen-year-old Agathe, whose goodness, dignity, and serenity win her employer's respect. Isidora is so impressed that, after a time, she decides to adopt Agathe as her daughter. The relationship is no longer one of a wealthy and powerful person giving gifts to a subservient other. Here, as with other successful alliances in Sand’s texts, reciprocality is the rule. Among her numerous contributions, Agathe has enabled Isidora to feel again spontaneously, without masking her feelings, without calculating their effect. The adolescent has helped Isidora put away her idle life and discover worthwhile, pleasurable activities. Agathe has entered into a sharing relationship with her new mother as Isidora rebuilds her own education on a solid foundation. The adoption comes only after the adopter knows herself well and only ‘once respect has been earned. As Isidora describes her new daughter, she is “la fille de mon coeur et de mon choix" (223). Isidora is a single mother, not exactly an "unwed mother" (although Sand did explore that situation in her work),14 therefore not an “illegitimate mother.” This adoption, however, while a good deal less radical than the case of Frangois le Champi, still does not quite meet all the legal conditions in effect at the time.'5 Isidora has decided to adopt out of admiration for Agathe's character, not because she has any burning desire for motherhood. In fact, she says, "Je n'avais jamais songé a adopter un enfant, je n'avais jamais regretté de n’en point avoir” (223), By adopting Agathe, Isidora has managed to have a child without the help of a man, thus avoiding sexuality, accomplishing, symbolically, the same act as the Virgin Mary,'6 and escaping the pain of childbirth meted out as punishment to Eve and through her to all women. With Isidora's decision to adopt, Sand has explored -- and exploded -- many stereotypes of women and their expected roles, Agathe, we learn, was brought up well by her artist father, at some distance from society. Motherless -- there is simply no mention that she ever had a mother -- the girl had no female role model deformed by patriarchy. Isidora has decided not to tell Agathe the story of her own bitter career as a courtesan, begun at sixteen, Agathe's current age, since Isidora feels that she has, through her wealth, successfully rescued her daughter from a similar fate.17 Isidora descri her daughter as a Raphaél Madonna and associates with her the flowers used to symbolize the- 57 - Virgin Mary in art: lilies, jasmine and myrtle.!8 Such idealization,'9 however, does not imprison Agathe the way Isidora was once imprisoned, by placing her on a pedestal, for Agathe retains her freedom of movement and remains active and hard-working. At the beginning of the book, the male narrator has rescued an elderly man who could not Pay his rent, symbolically reaching out to a past generation to continue the patriarchy. The book closes with Isidora's rescue of a young woman who symbolizes the future. "Agathe" comes from the Greek for good and honorable. (See Note13) Her name also recalls its homonym, the stone of the quartz family, suggesting the simple and down-to-earth. In her maturity, Isidora has ejected for herself the female trappings imposed by society, but she has no radical new ideas for her daughter's lifestyle; she wishes to adorn Agathe with similar luxurious items. Isidora has cured herself of her addiction to conquering males, but stil thinks in terms of novels with "and they lived happily ever after’ endings for her daughter20 Agathe, however, will have none of this. She was raised apart from society and lives with Isidora at least partially withdrawn from potential contamination from pre-determined female roles. She represents the future generation, a dream for posterity of natural woman, uncorrupted by social constructs. And | might even suggest that Agathe's name, through its homionym, symbolizes a rock foundation, a base for the creation of woman as she could be. Nineteenth century adoption laws, formulated by Napoleon, provided for the transmission of name and fortune. Sand, however, in her concern for the problems of children, saw adoption as a charitable act. After World War I, in 1923, the French legal system caught up with Sand, truly a visionary social reformer, and instituted adoption for minors. Simone de Beauvoir's novel, L'invitée, published in 1943, appeared, therefore, in this new legal context and during a war, when orphans had become highly visible. It is even more difficult, given this historical conjuncture, to overcome the obstacle of the adoption which ends with the killing of the adoptee -- with "infanticide," that statistically female crime?" ‘Adoption was a constant in Simone de Beauvoir's life, from the gathering of young people around the Sartre-Beauvoir couple, known as "the Family" -- variously termed "disciples", a "court" or, in a curiously vituperative volume, "une famille de paumés” 22-- to the legal adoption of Sylvie Le Bon as Beauvoir's companion and literary heir. The nominalized passive participle, "Iinvitée,” of Beauvoir's title, refers to the adolescent Xaviére. An invitation can be rescinded or refused. It is clear that the older Frangoise and Pierre retain control by extending the invitation and by supporting Xaviére in Paris. 23 Although we are rarely allowed to see Xaviére's unmediated reactions, we do glimpse her frustration with this dependency, when she confronts them with, "J'accepte votre argent . . . je me laisse entretenir par vous!" (416) And we see her frequently testing her welcome, as adoptees often do. 24 In contrast to the motif of adoption in Sand, which only enters into the text once the protagonist has wrestled with self-knowledge and then developed full respect for the young person she later adopts, Xavidre's "adoption" occurs -- and the text never specifies legal adoption -- in the early pages of L'Invitée. Xaviere is not without family. No mother is mentioned and Xaviére refers once to her "pauvre pére" (408), without saying whether or not he is still alive. However, she remains in touch with her aunt and uncle in Rouen and even returns to visit them. ‘A couple undertakes the adoption in L'invitée. It is the male character, Pierre, who makes the suggestion and the female, Francoise, who transmits his message -- one critic has termed the relationship one of ventriloquism 25 .- and begins to carry it out. Francoise is at first charmed by Xaviére's childish enthusiasms and truly desires to rescue her from what she sees as Xaviére's dismal situation in Rouen. Elizabeth Fallaize, in fact, terms Frangoise's efforts to help, a "Pygmalion role." 26 in its early stages, Frangoise sees the relationship among the three of them as something mysterious and magical: "elle comprenait enfin quel miracle avait fait irruption dans sa vie" (264). Francoise is writing a book on her youth --"sur ma jeunesse" (170) -- although she actually gets down to work very rarely. Her comments about adolescence suggest that she might see the adolescent Xaviére as an object of study,- 58 - ‘a difficult time speaking about herself, even to Pierre. 27 Pierre begins to take an interest in Xaviére when he too sees her as an object worthy of study. Both he and Frangoise spend endless hours interpreting Xaviére's words and actions. Beauvoir uses such terms as "déchiffrer" (120), "indices" (244), "signes" (248) and “exégeses' (244) to translate their feverish examination of their guest, 28 as if they were archaeologists, or entomologists. On at least one occasion, Xaviére perceives her role as object of study: “C'est Moi que vous étes en train de disséquer? Et j'accepte ca, moi?" (253). Pierre sees the enterprise of the trio not as something magical, but as an exceptionally challenging construction, and he thinks of their role as one of social engineering. | consider Pierre the mastermind of the trio, while Frangoise, when she is in agreement with him and not feeling suffocated by the relationship, serves as his willing agent. They exhort Xaviére to stretch herself to their level without giving her any real creative power in the structure. Theirs is not an egalitarian relationship, for all the theorizing. ; Two brief passages of L'Invitée echo the main adoption relationship and cast further light upon it. 29 One of these uses the verb “enlever" and the other, "séquestrer." Pierre imagines an adventure where he, Frangoise, and Xaviére would "rescue" a poor Greek child -- "Nous enléverons une belle petite fille grecque" (289). Later, Xaviere, in her admiration for the dancing of a black woman, fantasizes that one might "acheter et la séquestrer” (311). Xaviére's adoption too involves possession, domination, and criminality. Two lexical clusters with numerous manifestations further elucidate the adoption of Xaviére: "tendresse" (with "tendre," and compounds) and “haine” ("hair," “haineux," and compounds). Tenderness and hatred co-exist in all three characters, but in the expression of hatred, Xaviere is the overwhelming champion. Tenderness reveals itself primarily in looks and words. When Xaviére breaks down in despair, neither Pierre nor Frangoise is able to provide the hug of physical reassurance she seems to need. The trio's failure is based on the intellectual objectivication of Xaviére, each character's desire to possess and dominate another, and the creation of duos to the exclusion of a third. This breakdown is reflected in the crescendo of hatred. We follow Xaviére's evolution through her hatreds, from her childish and peevish adolescent outbursts: "Je hais cette ville,” (24) "J'ai horreur de ce genre de visage," (53) or "je ne peux pas souffrir Victor Hugo"(308). Such outbursts are compounded by her self-hatred, masochism, and deliberate provocation testing the relationship: "les joies de lesprit, ga me fait horreur” (121). But her hatred grows from "une hostilité enfantine et capricieuse” to "une vraie haine de femme" (483). Francoise, who has refused to examine lucidly her relationships with others, especially Pierre, finally comes to know hate in her association with Xaviére: "elle sentait avec une espéce de joie en elle quelque chose de noir et d'amer qu'elle ne connaissait pas encore et qui était presque une délivrance: puissante, libre, s'épanouissant enfin sans contrainte, c’était la haine” (445). The spiralling inferno of hatred, especially between the women, 39 finally leads to the struggle to the death between Frangoise and Xaviére Frangoise's decision to eliminate Xaviére has been variously interpreted. It has been seen as the necessary outcome of an existential drama, 31 akin to the murders in other existential texts, 32 and therefore befitting Beauvoir's original title Légitime défense. It has been analyzed as an oedipal drama ending with the expulsion of the "bad mother.” 33 |t has been treated as a cowardly non-act, “forever deferred,” 34 because Xaviére is not dead when the book ends. The murder of Xaviére was not a desperate, last-minute narrative solution for Beauvoir and its preparation in the text supports that view. 35 Pierre has had two murderous encounters with Xaviére: one he terms a “corrida" (371), as he relates it to Francoise, and the second, Frangoise, as helpless witness, qualifies as an “execution” (413). Francoise herself, in discussing with Pierre the problems of dealing with Xaviére in their situation of inequality, once smilingly thought, "ll faudrait tuer Xaviére . . ." (376). The absurdity of that idea has been especially since she admits to having~ 59 - foreshadowed by an important scene early in the novel. Pierre's sister Elisabeth, involved in her own more traditional trio of husband, wife, and mistress, has had murderous longings to kill her lover, his wife, or herself. Elisabeth's conclusion that "elle n'était plus a l'age des folles violences, ce serait trop facile,” (94) condemns Frangoise's final action. Elisabeth ranks, in fact, second to Xaviére in the number of immature expressions of hatred and intolerance. If the woman Frangoise has termed an "éternelle adolescente” (170) considers herself too mature for murder, we are forced to question Frangoise's decision. Elisabeth makes the connection between her desire to kill and the killing on stage in the play shaped and interpreted by Frangoise and Pierre, Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. Through the play, adoption36 divided loyalties, delusion, jealousy, betrayal, murder, and their complex motivations are planted in the readers’ minds early in the text, to be recalled, en abyme, in the final pages. Masculine models -- Pierre's actions, his play about men -- are the ones Frangoise chooses to emulate. Francoise thinks she has justified her final act, not as the elimination of Xaviére, but rather, as the choice of herself: "Elle avait enfin choisi. Elle s'était choisie” (503). Etymologically, to adopt comes from the Latin optare, to choose. Because Francoise did not make her own clear and conscious, independent decision to develop the relationship with Xaviére, but rather followed Pierre's suggestion, and did so only after a long night of drinking, she has been tormented by her imprisonment in a hellish situation for which she feels responsible and yet one she did not truly choose: "elle se sentait rivée & Xaviére par un lien qu'elle ne choisissait pas" (400). Throughout the novel, Frangoise has moments of realization that she must lucidly examine her life - primarily her relation to Pierre. She has fleeting thoughts about the inappropriateness of following someone else's desires, rather than her own authentic wishes, but she escapes into lazy refusal of self- analysis or into the comfort of iliness. Finally, blinded by rage and hatred, she sees no way out of the failed adoption but the cowardly act of turning on the gas. How, then, should we answer the question posed by my title? Is adoption a feminist motif in the two novels? /sidora clearly meets Joanna Russ's requirement that a feminist work present at minimum two women who are friendly. The relationship between Isidora and Agathe, ‘supported by such comments as, "I! était donc dans ma destinée que les hommes me perdraient et que je ne pourrais étre sauvée que par les femmes . . ." (226) leaves no room for doubt. This is not to say, however, that in all Sand works, female relationships are always harmonious. Far from it. /sidora is, in fact, exceptional. Like Beauvoir's, Sand's women also can hate other women, and the Sand women who have a good relationship generally live far apart. 37 Even in Isidora, | wonder if Sand didn't create the perfect daughter as a punishment for her own misbehaving Solange. L'invitée, on the other hand, fails to meet Russ's condition. The murderous hatred between Frangoise and Xaviére provides ample proof that they are finally anything but "friendly." Nor does the long-standing relationship between Francoise and Elisabeth truly qualify. To note this failing, however, is not to say that Simone de Beauvoir did not subsequently write a pioneering feminist work in Le Deuxiéme Sexe or to deny that she became a commited feminist in her later years.38 And, | confess, | am not ready to condemn L'Invitée as wholly “anti-feminist" because it fails to meet Russ's standard. We cannot expect either Sand or Beauvoir to represent feminism as we know it today, after many years of research and reflection. Both Sand's /sidora and Beauvoir's L'invitée examine questions of considerable importance to women's development. Sand, for instance, insists that self-understanding must precede motherhood, that motherhood is not “natural,” but must be a choice; Beauvoir openly explores women and jealousy, the power of hatred, and female crime within a “family” relationship. From the broader point of view of the volume Rethinking the Family, we may term both Sand and Beauvoir early feminists, despite our disappointment in L'invitée's female relationships, because their use of adoption may be seen as an attempt to explode the myth of the "natural family." From this standpoint, | propose, the two writers may be considered creatively feminist, for both have encouraged a profound rethinking of women's lives.= 60 - NOTES 1. Héléne Cixous, "Le Rire de la Méduse,” Simone de Beauvoir et /a lutte des femmes, L'Arc61 (1975):45. 2. See Yolanda Astarita Patterson, "Simone de Beauvoir" (25) and my "George Sand” (405) in French Women Writers. A Bio- bibliographical Source Book, eds. Eva Martin Sartori and Dorothy Wynne Zimmerman (New York: Greenwood, 1991). 3. Barrie Thorne, “Feminism and the Family: Two Decades of Thought," Rethinking the Family. Some Feminist Questions, ed. Barrie Thorne, with Marilyn Yalom (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1992. Revised and considerably expanded from the original edition: New York: Longman, 1982) 4. 4. Le Meunier d'Angibault (Plan de la Tour (Var): Editions d'Aujourd'hui, 1976). The numerous references to Sand in A History of Private Life, IV. From the Fires of Revolution To The Great War (ed. Michelle Perrot, trans. Arthur Goldhammer) (although | do not always agree with specific interpretations) illustrate her importance for the history of family life (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990). 5. | have written on adoption in Frangois le Champi in my article "Maternity and Marriage: Sand's Use of Fairy Tale and Myth,” Studies in the Literary Imagination 12.2 (1979): 37-47 6. | summarize these points and all other references to legal texts from C-B-M Toullier, Le Droit civil frangais (Paris: Jules Renouard, 1830); Georges Ripert and Jean Boulanger, eds., Traité élémentaire de droit civil de Planiol (Paris: R. Pichon, 1950); and Henri, Léon and Jean Mazeaud, Legons de droit civil 1.3, ed. Miche! de Juglart (Paris: Montchrestien, 1976, 1978). | express my gratitude to two friends, Magistrates Annabel Esclapez and Paule Paris, for their excellent research on my behalf. Gilles Bollenot's article "L'Adoption au xix® siécle: "La Fortune de Gaspard" de la Comtesse de Ségur," Revue Historique 271.2 (1984): 311-337, mentions many of these legal points. The article on the Comtesse de Ségur is one of very few | have found on the use of adoption in literature. The only others: Alain Jumeau, "George Eliot et la pratique de l'adoption," Actes du congrés d'Amiens (1987): 295-308, and one | have not read, "The Adoption Theme in Edward Albee's Tiny Alice and The American Dream, The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child 29 (1974): 413-429. Reference found in Lois Ruskai Melina, Adoption. An Annotated Bibliography and Guide (New York: Garland, 1987) 18. Marianne Novy of the University of Pittsburgh has proposed a special session, "Adoption and Adoptees,” for the 1993 MLA in Toronto and intends to edit an anthology of articles on the subject. 7. George Sand, /sidora, ed. Eve Sourian (Paris: des Femmes, 1990). Simone de Beauvoir, L'Invitée (Paris: Gallimard (Folio), 1991). 8. The Freudian Helene Deutsch, for instance, speaks of the element of "rescue fantasy,” present in some women's desire to adopt, in The Psychology of Women: A Psychoanalytic Interpretation (New York: Grune and Stratton, 1945) Il, 416. Although Deutsch has long been superceded in many respects by feminist analysis, | still find some useful ideas in her work on adoption (chapter 11, "Adoptive Mothers": 393-433), which has been little discussed elsewhere. 9. Much has been written about the absence of mothers in women writers’ texts and the matrophobia it represents. See, for instance, Marianne Hirsch's review essay, "Mothers and Daughters,” Signs 7.1 (1981): 200-222.- 61 - 10. The Joanna Russ quote was reprinted perhaps fifteen or twenty years ago in Ms Magazine from the Boston newspaper Sojourner. The quote so struck me that | cut the item out, but, unfortunately, | did not note publication dates. Because it was not in an article but rather served as a “tiller,” | have no efficient way of tracking it down. 11. Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (ed. Carol H. Poston, New York: Norton, 1975) 62. The exact wording is: "| do not wish them to have power over men; but over themselves." 12. | discuss the epistolary autobiography of /sidora in my forthcoming “/sidora, an Enabling Exercise for Histoire de ma vie? Studii Romanica (Lajos-Kossuth University, Debrecen, Hungary) 13. For the etymology of Isidora (and, later, Agathe), see Patricia Hanks and Flavia Hodges, Dictionary of First Names (Oxford: Oxtord University Press, 1990). 14. For example, in Valentine. The pregnant Noun of Indiana drowns herself before giving birth. Sand often, courageously, treated the "fallen woman" in her various manifestations; she is one of the rare women authors of her century to do so. 15. For example, Isidora, at age forty-five, has not reached the age requirement of fifty. Agathe, at sixteen, remains a minor, and thus is not legally adoptable. 16. Helene Deutsch (see note 8) speaks of the "parthenogenetic fantasy” (396) represented by certain cases of adoption. 17. Marianne Hirsch in her excellent The Mother Daughter Plot: Narrative, Psychoanalysis, Feminism, considers that a daughter who doesn't know her mother's story risks repeating it (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989) 67. 18. On floral symbolism, see Elizabeth Haig, The Floral Symbolism of the Great Masters (London: Kegan, Paul, Trench and Tribner, 1913) and Charles M. Skinner, Myths and Legends Of Flowers, Trees, Fruits and Plants in All Ages and All Climes (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1911 1925) 19. Such idealization of children characterized Romantic literature, of course. See Marine Bethlenfalvy, Les Visages de l'enfant dans la littérature francaise du dix-neuviéme siécle. Esquisse d'une typologie (Geneva: Droz, 1979) 40. 20. Or what Carolyn Heilbrun calls "the old marriage plot,” in Writing a Woman's Life(New York: Norton, 1988) 121. 21. Although its analysis covers another time and place, Murdering Mothers: Infanticide in England and New England 1558-1803, by Peter C. Hoffer and N.E.H. Hull, establishes the preponderance of women as perpetrators of the crime of infanticide (New York: New York University Press, 1981) 98. 22. "Disciples": Catherine Savage Brosman, Simone de Beauvoir Revisited (Boston: G.K. Hall, 1991) 14. "Court": Renee Winegarten, Simone de Beauvoir. A Critical View (Oxford: Berg, 1988) 34. "Une famille de paumés": Gilbert Joseph, Une si douce Occupation. Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre 1940-1944 (Paris: Albin Michel, 1991) 138. 23. The English title She Came to Stay fails to translate these important characteristics. 24. Adoption specialists brought out this aspect of the adoptee's reactions in an October 21,- 62 - 1992, segment of a France 3 television documentary on adoption in the series "La Marche du siécle," for example. 25. Martha Noel Evans, Masks of Tradition. Women and the Politics of Writing in Twentieth Century France (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987) 87 26. Elizabeth Fallaize, The Novels of Simone de Beauvoir (London: Routledge, 1988) 29. 27. "Quand elle était de sang-froid, ¢a lintimidait toujours un peu de parler d'elle” (375) 28. Francoise terms the period of the trio's existence "cette année fiévreuse” (431). 29. The minor subplot of Gerber's six adoptive fathers (including Pierre) represents more clearly the charitable form of adoption, because he was bailed out of explicitly painful family circumstances. 30. Women's expression of anger, hatred, and jealousy has been stifled; one must admire Simone de Beauvoir's courage in exploring them in this way. 31. See Joy Bennett and Gabriella Hochmann, Simone de Beauvoir. An Annotated Bibliography, for this comment from an article in La France Libre in 1944, signed only with the initials "A. S." (New York: Garland, 1988) 347. 32. Michel Fabre, “Richard Wright, French Existentialism, and The Outsider,” Critical Essays on Richard Wright, ed. Yoshinobu Hakutoni (Boston: G.K. Hall, 1982) 195. See also Yolanda A. Patterson, Simone de Beauvoir and the Demystification of Motherhood (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1989) 73. 33. Judith Okely, Simone de Beauvoir (London: Virago, 1986) 137-139. Okely refers to Toril Moi's work as one of her sources on this matter. In a later article, "Simone de Beauvoir's L'Invitée: an Existentialist Melodrama," Moi refers to the murder as Frangoise's symbolic killing of her own unconscious "to expel the bad mother from her psyche," Paragraph 14 (1991): 165. 34. Martha Noel Evans, "Murdering L'Invitée: Gender and Fictional Narrative," Simone de Beauvoir: Witness to a Century, Yale French Studies 72 (1986): 83. Karen McPherson terms it an “unconsummated crime," in "Criminal Passions in Simone de Beauvoir's L'Invitée," Simone de Beauvoir Studies 5 (1988): 37. 35. Toril Moi takes as her point of departure Beauvoir's comments in La Force de /'ége concerning the narrative planning for the murder. Both Moi (see note 33) and Karen McPherson (note 34) give evidence that the murder was not a last- minute narrative solution. 36. Although Caesar's legal heir was his adopted grand- nephew Octavius, he also considered Brutus something of an adopted son, as his final words, "Et tu, Brute fili?" inscribed in Roman chronicles, reveal. See William Rose Benét, The Reader's Encyclopedia (New York: Crowell, 1965) 142, 156-7, 325. Curiously, Sand also makes reference to the Caesar story when she has Isidora term Agathe "fille de César" (250). | have not been able to locate this italicized allusion, however. 37. For a study of relations among women in Sand's works, see my "George Sand Misogynist?" George Sand Newsletter 6.1/2 (1983): 58-65. Even in Isidora, the protagonist and her sister-in- law Alice, despite the effusive scenes of friendship, finally live in different countries because of their love of the same man. 38. Through her analysis based on "speech act" theory, Barbara Klaw has provided a feminist reading of L'Invitée in her article "L'invitée: A Sociolinguistic Approach to Speech Acts, Gender and Power,” Simone de Beauvoir Studies 8 (1991): 123-129. Hazel Barnes's moving and witty testimonial in this volume illustrates the extent of Beauvoir's feminist influence.