Customer Reviews:
 The Woman Destroyed; not action packed but a good read January 13, 2004
3 out of 5 found this review helpful
The Woman Destroyed is comprised of three stories but it is the third story, from which the book title is derived, which is without a doubt the most captivating. Monique is a middle-aged french woman who presents her seemingly normal, family-orientated lifestyle to the reader through a diary form. However, a short way into her diary, Monique learns that her husband is having an affair. As Monique considers the implications of her husband's infidelity, she reveals to the reader a woman who has essentially been in denial about the state of her own marriage, has no financial independance and no life outside the marital home. Monique's words can at tiems be frustrating - why can't she move on from the past? - as well as extremely self-pitying, but they always seem genuine; infact you are left wonderig how much of the story is based on de Beauvoir's personal experience.
 a must read for every woman June 2, 2003
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Having just read this for a female voices course in French studies, I was bowled over by its alarmingly truthful nature of how women are objectified by society.
A prior knowledge of Beauvoir's work is helpful but not entirely necessary as the themes and ideas relate to all women within Western capitalist society.The idea that women have a biological commercial value that finds them their role within the patriachy i.e. the woman must have children to have any value.
The format is shown through three short stories that have completely human protagonists; for example, in Monologue, the second in the book, which is set within the style of a stream of consciouness, the woman, Muriel, repeats "I'm fed up" eighty times which represents the brutality of her feeling deserted by the society that told her she had to be a mother to have any worth.
In conclusion, all women should read this and come to fully comprehend "la mauvaise foi", the inability to accept one's freedom when they are offered the chance.
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