I just finished reading Simone de Beauvoir's short novel Inseparable. Knowing Simone, I expected the major characters in this novel (the inseparable girls) would be rebellious in nature and utterly courageous. However, I hadn’t imagined them to be frighteningly bold and naively dutiful -daughters (one of them) struggling to break free from the conventional Catholic traditions of their time. One of them more dutiful than the other, obviously, tragically sacrifices her life after tormenting herself between her love and her duty to her family. Living a life of a woman was, and still is, not easy in many developing countries, but I didn’t think having ‘temptation’ even after being engaged with your partner was considered as sin in the 1950s in Europe.
The book mirrors religious hypocrisy in France during Beauvoir’s formative years. Her expression of “If god exists, evil is not comprehensible,” is totally opposite of the wildly held belief that “We’re only the instruments of God” and “Its’ prideful to want to understand everything”.
