A Very Easy Death

A Very Easy Death (published in 1964 as Une mort très douce) is a memoir by the French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir about the death of her mother, Françoise. Beauvoir spends six weeks with her mother as she dies of terminal cancer. Françoise’s cancer is diagnosed following a fall and is withheld from her by the doctors and Beauvoir, a practice which was common at the time. During this time, Beauvoir grapples with both the ethics of this decision and past conflicts with her mother, who Beauvoir felt was a domineering presence in her youth. In precise detail, Beauvoir traces the flux of feelings provoked by her mother’s deterioration, leading to a reevaluation of Françoise as an individual and a mother. What emerges is an unsparing, deeply compassionate account of the death of a mother through which Beauvoir interweaves an existential analysis of Françoise’s unhappy life.

This guide uses the e-book version of the 1985 Pantheon Books edition, translated by Patrick O’Brian.

Content Warning: This guide and the source material refer to terminal illness and death, bereavement, addiction, and suicide.

Note: This guide uses “Simone” to refer to Simone de Beauvoir the character within the text and “Beauvoir” to refer to Simone de Beauvoir as the author of this text.

Summary

In Paris on October 24, 1963, Simone de Beauvoir’s 77-year-old mother Françoise falls and breaks her femur. After crawling for hours to reach the phone, she is brought to a public hospital where she spends a night before being transferred to a private geriatric clinic. Simone and her sister, Hélène, both out of town at the time of the fall, return to Paris. In the clinic they find Françoise confused but after a few days she regains lucidity. Having denied the limitations of old age for years, Françoise finally acknowledges the constraints of aging and resolves to start a new chapter of her life.

Through an existentialist lens, Beauvoir reflects on Françoise’s life: one of self-abnegation and resentment. Françoise was an unloved elder daughter who only received affection from the mother superior of the convent school she attended. There the nuns inculcated a rigid morality that suppressed Françoise’s natural passion for life. At the age of 20 she suffered grave disappointment when the cousin she loved chose to marry another cousin over her. Soon thereafter she married Georges de Beauvoir and, despite his selfishness, they were happy together for a time. After the First World War, Georges lost all of his money and Françoise was burdened and isolated by the housework once done by servants. Françoise also suffered Georges’s absent affection and increasingly overt infidelities. Stymied in her own desires, Françoise lived vicariously through her daughters Simone and Hélène, often to the point of tyranny. This drove Simone to rebel against her mother, Catholicism, and bourgeois values. Simone left home as soon as possible and became a philosopher of national, and then international, renown.

Simone and Françoise’s relationship changed following Georges’s death in 1941. Left without money, Françoise attended school and found a job as an assistant librarian. With her children supporting themselves, Françoise pursued hobbies previously unavailable to her; for the first time in her life, she didn’t sacrifice herself for others. This fresh vigor for life waned over the following decades as arthritis increasingly confined Françoise to her apartment and her old bitterness returned.

Now, in the geriatric clinic, the stomach pain Françoise has suffered intermittently for weeks returns. X-rays reveal a massive intestinal sarcoma: a terminal diagnosis. Following the doctors’ lead, Simone and Hélène withhold this diagnosis from Françoise in the hope of sparing her despair. Days later Françoise comes very close to death and a resuscitation expert, Dr. N., revives her. The next day the doctors get Françoise and Simone’s permission to operate, telling Françoise that this is for peritonitis, a curable condition. The operation confirms the terminal malignancy and weakens Françoise, leading Simone to regret giving her permission. Simone clashes with Dr. N., whose concern is to keep Françoise body functioning, not to ease her suffering.

In the weeks following the surgery, Françoise’s health fluctuates. Simone and Hélène settle into daily shifts with their mother in the clinic. Françoise’s deterioration transforms the way Simone sees her, from a mother—both protector and tyrant—to an unrecognizable living corpse.

During these weeks beside her mother, Simone comes to admire her tenacious will to live, and mother and daughter reconcile. Simone is agonized by her continuing decision to conceal the medical diagnosis from Françoise. She perceives herself as a part of a larger charade in the clinic which conceals the inevitability of death from the patients.

Six weeks after her fall, Françoise’s dies. Simone rushes to the clinic but Françoise but is not lucid for the death. The sight of Françoise’s body is both expected and unfathomable to Simone. Simone and Hélène give their mother the simple funeral she wanted.

Simone de Beauvoir reflects on her mother’s death, in particular Françoise’s attitude toward her faith in her final weeks. A devout Catholic all her life, Françoise nevertheless refused to see a priest before she died and disliked it when her pious friends visited. In these actions, Beauvoir interprets her mother’s ineradicable passion for life which prevented her from resigning herself to the consolation of heaven. Beauvoir identifies with this affirmation of life, seeing in it the ethos of her existential philosophy.

Finally, Beauvoir considers whether her mother’s death was made easier by the life-prolonging treatments she received. She decides that they granted a reprieve that allowed Beauvoir to reconcile with her mother and accept her death. While these treatments brought Françoise additional weeks of anxiety and suffering, they also allowed her to reclaim her life from misery and resentment. In this state of relative harmony, Françoise died clinging to life, as, Beauvoir writes, anyone who loves life must do.