The Death of the Other, the Death of the Self: A New Reading of Simone de Beauvoir’s Novel She Came to Stay

Abstract

In this article, I present a new reading of the ending of Simone de Beauvoir’s first novel, She Came to Stay (L’Invite’e). Throughout the novel different authors have identified some ideas on existentialism and phenomenology, more specifically seeing the novel as a representation of the Master-Slave Dialectic, but my reading of the final scene goes beyond a simple murder. Using a new interpretation of the Master-Slave Dialectic, I will argue that by killing Xavière, Françoise also killed her own conscience, her own self. Françoise was not only killing Xavière but also committing suicide. We will also see more explicitly how Simone de Beauvoir understood existence and dependency