Free Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter by Simone de Beauvoir

morality was only half-respected. She didn’t want to be taken for a prude, and so she renounced her own standards of judgement: instead she decided that she would take the rules of etiquette as her guide. Papa’s best friend was living with a woman, and that meant he was living in sin; that didn’t prevent him from paying frequent visits to our house; but his mistress could not be received. My mother never dreamed of protesting in any way against an illogicality sanctioned by social conventions. She consented to many other compromises; they did not do violence to her principles; it was even perhaps in order to compensate for these concessions that she preserved, in her heart of hearts, a rigorously inflexible personal morality. Although she had been without doubt happy in her marriage, she was apt to confuse sexuality with vice: she always associated fleshly desires with sin. Convention obliged her to excuse certain indiscretions in men; she concentrated her disapproval on women; she divided women into those who were ‘respectable’ and those who were ‘loose’. There could be no intermediate grades. ‘Physical’ questions sickened her so much that she never attempted to discuss them with me; she did not even warn me about the surprises awaiting me on the threshold of puberty. In all other matters, she accepted my father’s ideas without ever appearing to find any difficulty in reconciling them with her religion. My father was constantly astonished by the paradoxes of the human heart, by the playful tricks of heredity, and by the strangeness of dreams; I never saw my mother astonished by anything.
    In complete contrast to my father’s negligence, she was profoundly conscious of her responsibilities, and took to heart the duties of mother and counsellor. She sought guidance from the Union of Christian Mothers, and often attended their meetings. She took me to school, attended my classes and kept a strict eye on my homework and my lessons; she learnt English and began to study Latin in order to be able to follow my progress. She supervised my reading, and accompanied me to Mass and compline; my mother, my sister, and I performed our devotions together, morning and evening. At every instant of the day she was present, even in the most secret recesses of my soul, and I made no distinction between her all-seeing wisdom and the eye of God Himself. None of my aunts – not even Aunt Marguerite who had been brought up in the Sacré-Cœur – practised their religion with as much zeal asshe. She regularly received Holy Communion, prayed long and fervently and read numberless works of piety. Her personal conduct was an outward expression of her deep faith: with ready unselfishness, she devoted her entire being to the welfare of those near and dear to her. I did not look upon her as a saint, because I knew her too well and because she lost her temper far too easily; but her example seemed to me all the more unassailable because of that: I, too, was able to, and therefore ought to emulate her in piety and virtue. The warmth of her affection made up for her unpredictable temper. If she had been more impeccable in her conduct, she would also have been more remote, and would not have had such a profound effect upon me.
    Her hold over me stemmed indeed a great deal from the very intimacy of our relationship. My father treated me like a fully developed person; my mother watched over me as a mother watches over a child; and a child I still was. She was more indulgent towards me than he: she found it quite natural that I should be a silly little girl, whereas my stupidity only exasperated my father; she was amused by my childish sayings and scribblings; he found them quite unfunny. I wanted to be taken notice of; but fundamentally I needed to be accepted for what I was, with all the deficiencies of my age; my mother’s tenderness assured me that this wish was a justifiable one. I was