Sylvie Le Bon-de Beauvoir

Relationship with Simone de Beauvoir

Le Bon, a philosophy student, first wrote a fan letter to Beauvoir in high school, at the age of 17. Beauvoir later invited her over when she was a philosophy student in college. In All Said and Done, the book where Beauvoir details the chronology of her relationship with Le Bon, Beauvoir remarks on the “réciprocité” in their relationship and that she viewed Le Bon as someone similar to her–“an intellectual with a passion for life." The relationship that followed was intimate in nature, yet Beauvoir always refused the label of “lesbian.” After being together for 22 years, Beauvoir legally adopted Le Bon as her daughter, but both Le Bon and Beauvoir adamantly state this was not to cement a mother-daughter dynamic. It was rather to assign a legal heir for her unpublished writing. Beauvoir was the one to propose the idea of an adoption and Le Bon was initially reluctant due to fears of scandal and gossip. The advantage to this legal action was that Le Bon became the director of Beauvoir’s posthumous publications. Beauvoir told Le Bon the adoption is “like marriage, because you share my name.” Some scholars interpret this act of adoption as a form of resistance against the heteronormative family unit.

Beauvoir dedicated the last installment of her memoirs All Said and Done to Le Bon. In this book, Beauvoir describes how she encountered Le Bon and how they formed their relationship. Beauvoir noted how nervous Le Bon was in their initial meeting, when Le Bon was still in school. As they had more discussions on literature over time, Beauvoir appreciated that Le Bon was one of the few who understood the meaning of the epilogue Beauvoir wrote in Force of Circumstance. She also records Le Bon’s lesbian coming-of-age experiences, such as Le Bon’s mother shaming her for having a crush on a friend. Beauvoir felt that she had found a true listener in Le Bon and believed they were similar as people: “There is no one who could have appreciated more than I what I have received from her. I loved her enthusiasms and her anger, her gravity, her gaiety, her horror of the commonplace, her uncalculating generosity.” Le Bon was thoroughly integrated into the social circles of Beauvoir and they often saw each other on a daily basis.

After Beauvoir’s death in 1986, Le Bon took over the publication of her work materials and became a spokesperson for Beauvoir. Le Bon participated in a 1994 interview to elucidate Beauvoir’s stances, such as her opinions on Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, and Michel Foucault. Le Bon herself does not have favorable views on Foucault, calling his ideas overrated, old-fashioned, and pseudo-scientific. Le Bon has an established dislike towards Foucault: she has also called him an "archaeological positivist” whose “arbitrary manipulation of constituted knowledges is illegitimate.”

In a 2021 interview, Le Bon described their relationship as friends of equal footing and one of love. Beauvoir described the atypical relationship: “What made it complicated is that neither one of us was prepared, especially me, to love someone who was a woman. But that’s what it was, love, that’s all." Beauvoir did not leave room for interpretation in terms of how serious the relationship was: “from the beginning…we were both prepared to live entirely for each other.” Le Bon even compared their relationship to Beauvoir’s strongest sapphic connection, her childhood friend Zaza. She claims her relationship with Beauvoir was as intense as Beauvoir’s was with Zaza and that their relationship fulfilled Beauvoir’s lifelong search for an intimacy similar to Zaza’s. Beauvoir mirrors this sentiment, as she told a biographer her feelings toward Le Bon are like hers towards Zaza and that she “kept [her] nostalgia for that [her] whole life."

Contributions to Beauvoir’s Posthumous Legacy

Most of Le Bon’s contributions to Beauvoir as a public figure is through the posthumous publication of Beauvoir’s texts. Le Bon took her role as literary executor for Beauvoir to be a mandate to publish these texts.

Le Bon chose the title for Beauvoir’s posthumously published book The Inseparables, as the original manuscript had no title; also wrote introduction

Soon after Le Bon publicized the manuscript in France in 2020, two English translations came out concurrently, since Ecco had the North American rights and Vintage Classics had the rights in the UK.

Le Bon says this is Beauvoir’s fourth time writing the story of her intense friendship and love for Zaza, attempts that came from Beauvoir trying to “bring Zaza back to life, in vain.” Le Bon interpreted Beauvoir and Zaza as “one of those great, enigmatic friendships,” but others such as Paul B. Preciado disagreed–“No, this wasn’t friendship. This was a lesbian love story.”

Republished Beauvoir’s first novel When Things of the Spirit Come First

Published volumes of Beauvoir’s letters: Unlike Sartre’s adopted daughter Arlette Elkaïm, Le Bon chose to publish Beauvoir’s letters unedited. Letter writing forms an especially valuable part of Beauvoir’s legacy as one of Beauvoir’s distinct characteristics as an author was that her readers felt that she was approachable enough to directly contact her, some even confessing secrets in their letters, and she would often write back. Beauvoir was known to value this correspondence, seeing her readers as the anchor to her work, her literature as a dialogue rather than a closed form expository exercise. Le Bon helped archive Beauvoir’s letters in the Bibliothèque Nationale. Though Beauvoir gave vague answers when questioned about these letters, Le Bon revealed that Beauvoir did catalogue her letters chronologically, suggesting Beauvoir had some interest in the storage and ease of access for these writings.

Lettres à Sartre (an anthology of the letters between Simone de Beauvoir and Sartre)