Simone De Beauvoir

Summary of Evidence:

Simone de Beauvoir was born in Paris in 1908 to Georges de Beauvoir and Francoise Brasseur.1 Her father was born and raised in a rich family with that drew him to the extreme right on the political scale.1 He was a strong atheist, and pushed his proclivities on Beauvoir and her sister.1 Her mother on the other hand was a devout Catholic, and that along with her meek and submissive personality, something that manifests itself in the fact that she grew up in a time before first wave feminism, really polarized her and Beauvoir. Her father fed her intellectual side, providing her with many works of literature and encouraging her to read and write from an early age. Beauvoir was a deeply religious child as a result of her education and her mother 's training; however, at the age of 14 she had a crisis of faith and decided that there was definitely no God.1 This followed the end of WW I, when her family lost a

Simone Weil was born in Feb 1903 and died early in August 1943, from tuberculosis.

Simone Weil boasted of a bloodline whose outstanding trait was its intellectual precocity. Her father, Bernard Weil was a physician and her mother, Selma Weil, came from a rich Jewish business family. As a child, Selma wanted to become a doctor, but her father did not support her decision. So, as a mother, she wanted the best education for her kids. Weil felt strongly about food and gave up sugar at an early age of six, as it was not rationed to French soldiers in the war. She maintained this attitude throughout her life, starving herself for causes she believed in. This contributed to the fact that all her life, she suffered from sinusitis, severe headaches and poor physical health, and owing to malnutrition, she suffered from what she called “mystical experiences” making her, unlike Beauvoir a big believer in mysticism and the world beyond her definition of reality.3 Religion also had great influence on her, having converted to catholicism later in her