Simone de Beauvoir’s Only Play

French philosophers Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre may have been life partners, but they weren’t always equals. Jean-Paul Sartre was an accomplished playwright and a major figure in twentieth-century French theatre, with widely studied plays like The Flies, No Exit, The Respectful Prostitute, and Dirty Hands. Simone de Beauvoir, though a respected writer of feminist texts in her own right, had a much more limited impact on French theatre, producing only a single play, Who Shall Die? It is also known by its original French title, Les Bouches inutiles (The Useless Mouths), when it is recognized at all. The play has generally been neglected by all but a handful of scholars.

Les Bouches inutiles was performed on a Parisian stage in November of 1945, the year World War II ended. But the fact that the play wasn’t a sweeping success does not mean that Beauvoir was any less committed than Sartre to grappling with profound questions about a world that had been brutally ravaged by great violence and hardship. Both were writing during a period when Europe had been deeply unsettled by war, and existential philosophers were dissecting the moral dilemmas that presented themselves in this context. In using theatre as her medium, Beauvoir chose to tackle issues of food scarcity and the ways in which human lives are differentially valued in times of crisis.

Her play takes place in the fictional Flanders city of Vaucelles in the fourteenth-century. It’s wartime and the city is under siege by its enemies. The populace’s food supply is quickly running low. The powerful men in charge want to maintain control over the remaining resources for themselves and their soldiers, while sacrificing those in the city who are deemed “useless.” This means that the women, their children, the sick, and the elderly are condemned to starve to death because their lives and contributions to society aren’t seen as worthy of survival.

“The less powerful find that such times of crisis rob them of their illusions concerning their perception of self-definition inasmuch as their perceptions do not coincide with those of the powerful,” writes scholar Virginia M. Fichera in her essay on the play’s philosophical depths for Yale French Studies.

In an essay for Simone de Beauvoir Studies, scholar Joanne Megna-Wallace regards the play as a feminist work. Beauvoir effectively presents a woman’s perspective through the character of Catherine, the noble wife of one of the leaders of Vaucelles’s ruling council. Catherine is confined to the traditional gender role of a politician’s spouse, powerless to participate in political decision-making. Even so, she asserts her voice and uses the influence she has to save other women. Megna-Wallace writes:

It is significant that in this work the actions of the women are confined to a non-political role. They are without representation on the ruling council, and are even excluded from addressing this body. Like women throughout history, they are forced to rely on the good will of their leaders, and when this falls, to use their influence in the personal sphere.

Les Bouches inutiles is a play worth revisiting in light of long-standing struggles over whose lives are valued and defended. Although Beauvoir remains a controversial figure for her own unconventional personal life, her ideas about gender inequality, disability discrimination, ageism, and large-scale human suffering have never been more relevant.

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