A Conversation about Sex and Women with Jean-Paul Sartre

reassuring words from france's foremost philosopher: "even when i think about subjects not directly related to women, i am still thinking about women"

[Q] Chaine: Most people generally feel they should discuss philosophy, literature or politics with you. I would like, however, to talk with you about women, about the role they have played and still play in your life. All things considered, it is my impression that you are very much a ladies' man.

[A] Sartre: That's true; I've always been very fond of women. They have always been at the center of my thoughts. Without any doubt, it is women I have thought the most about, as a child, as an adult and as an old man. Even when I think about subjects that are not directly related to women, I am still thinking about women.

[Q] Chaine: Why?

[A] Sartre: Because my family was made up mostly of women: my mother, my grandmother and their women friends. There was just one man, my grandfather. As a child, I imagined that I would someday be like him, surrounded by women. For me, women were always the stuff of dreams.

I can recall playing under the bandstand in a park at Vichy and on the beach at Arcachon. I recall, too, a little girl who suffered from tuberculosis and who passed the days on a reclining chair in her garden. I used to spend hours at her side. From nine to 16, I lived in La Rochelle and I had very little in the way of relationships with girls, but since the age of 16, when I returned to Paris, I've seen a great many women, and they've become truly important to me, important in my everyday life. So I can say that women have occupied a very large place in my life from the time that I was four or five years old--perhaps even earlier.

[Q] Chaine: Surrounded as you were by the women of your family and by the little girls you knew, were you brought up as a male chauvinist?

[A] Sartre: As a child, certainly, I was a male chauvinist, because I envisioned that those little girls and the women friends whom I would later have would always be organized around me, be connected with me. Thus, I looked upon them as my inferiors and, as for myself, I was the superior. I didn't think of it that way, but, in any case, that's the way it was. Nevertheless, I regarded them as equals---

[Q] Chaine: Sort of a liberal male-chauvinist pig, then.

[A] Sartre: Well, yes ... the idea of seduction. I'd come upon it in books and it had appealed to me from the age of six. The man seduced the woman--which, for me, meant seducing a six-year-old girl. That idea, which was contrived and a bit elaborate, was making the rounds when I was five years old. A man would come into a woman's life and, by his imposing appearance, by the words he spoke to her or by the way in which he dealt with her, he would obtain her womanly favors. That seemed to be the very model of the male-chauvinist approach ... although, in the same period, the counterpart thereof--the femme fatale--also existed. The seducer and the femme fatale belonged to the pre-1914 myths. I accepted that idea of seduction. I very willingly agreed to play my role, even though it presupposed certain qualities that I did not have. Good looks, for example, which I believed myself to possess before my hair was cut short but which I later knew I didn't have. And so I was a male chauvinist; but once I had seduced the woman--without any idea of how I'd done it--there came a certain moment when she said, "I am seduced." Well, then, at that moment, there was equality.

[Q] Chaine: How?

[A] Sartre: You know, being a male chauvinist isn't as simple as people think it is. It isn't a continuous bearing of superiority. It's a superiority that bursts forth just now and then. The seduced woman and I would go out and sit on a bench in the moonlight, on a very lovely night, and we would talk at great length. That's the way I saw it. This idea of seduction disappeared, to be sure, as soon as I'd acquired a bit of good sense, but it brought me around to women. At the same time, another idea took hold of me: that once a relationship had been formed, it ought to be one of equals. Indeed, it was a question of overcoming a woman in almost the same way that one overcame a wild animal, but by wiles, smiles and ingenuity; to force her out of the wild state into one of equality with man. It was as if I had tamed a tigress that, once tamed, became my equal.

That is how I looked upon relationships with women, as long as I didn't know very much about what a woman really was or about how she differed from a man. I realized that women were probably different from a psychological standpoint, but at the age of ten, it was hard enough for me to imagine their bodies, and I could not imagine anything but what I myself was. It was only later, at 11, 12 or 13, that I began to visualize their peculiar features, and I wasn't really fully informed until I was 15 or 16.

[Q] Chaine: You often say women. You speak of them in the plural. Either as a child or as an adolescent, didn't you imagine one who would become "the" woman of your life?

[A] Sartre: No, because from the very start, I was a polygamist. I always thought that my sex life would be multiple. There, too, I was a male chauvinist: I never imagined a girl who would become the only girl of my life.

[Q] Chaine: Why?

[A] Sartre: No doubt it was due to the male-chauvinist upbringing that I received, to the male-chauvinist atmosphere that surrounded me. My grandfather had a most peculiar life. He got along very well with my grandmother, but for a long time he had not had sexual relations with her, because she detested them and pretended to be sick. So he used to have relations with the older students in his German class.

[Q] Chaine: What did you think women would be able to do for you?

[A] Sartre: What I have always looked for in a woman is an equal, but an equal who could provide me with the emotional, the sentimental. Tenderness and love, as I imagined them, meant two people clasping each other and kissing. That's what it was and I couldn't enjoy it with boys because they were too coarse. Relations with boys meant a friendly exchange of fists, and nothing else. No tenderness. What I found among little girls was the sentiment and intimacy that I'd been given from the very start in my family, by my mother, my grandmother and their women friends. This sentimentality that blossomed forth with the girls was, for me, the essential factor in sex.

Also, as an adolescent, I imagined that I was protecting the woman with whom I strolled in the moonlight against the loathsome designs of other men. But, little by little, the idea of protection disappeared. At the age of 20, it was gone. There was no longer any connection between the idea of strolling in the moonlight and the idea of protecting the person with whom I was strolling. Besides, it was less a matter of strolling in the moonlight than of what goes on between all men and all women.

[Q] Chaine: Apart from those ideas about women, what was happening in your everyday life as an adolescent?

[A] Sartre: Nothing very important or very vivid. When I was 13 or 14, in high school in La Rochelle, those boys who were worth their salt had what were called poules. That expression wasn't polite or pleasant, but it was much used and meant that you went out with a young female friend from the girls' high school or elsewhere.

[Q] Chaine: What did going out mean?

[A] Sartre: Nothing very much. I suppose there was a bit of kissing in secluded places, but it didn't go very far. And we would talk about it very guardedly and with deep silences that caused the relationships to seem much more important than they really were. I recall that at the age of 11, I quaintly began my life at the high school in La Rochelle by claiming that I had a mistress and that we used to go to hotels together.

[Q] Chaine: Did anyone believe you?

[A] Sartre: No, of course, the others didn't believe me, and they made fun of me. After that, I claimed that I was having relations with Lisette, the daughter of a shipowner. Obviously, there was no truth in it. She was a very pretty little girl, and it is certainly true that I would have liked to.... Well, some of my schoolmates pretended to set up a date for me. I went there and found two groups--a group of schoolmates who were pushing me to speak to her and a group of boys who were with the girl and who looked forward to the joke. She, too, was probably in on it and a bit irritated. She called me a swollen-headed guttersnipe. Then she took off on her bicycle and I ran after her. That's how things stood between us. Obviously, I behaved ridiculously and it infuriated me for a long time.

[Q] Chaine: Were you ever a handsome boy?

[A] Sartre: AS a child, my hair was blond and, I think, quite attractive; it reached down to my shoulders and it must have given a false impression. Let's say that if my face was ugly but my hair was beautiful, then my face appeared less ugly than it really was. One day my grandfather, without consulting his womenfolk--which is to say, his wife and his daughter--made up his mind to have my hair cut. Whatever must have gotten into him? I don't know. In any case, he thought that a boy ought to have short hair. So he took me to the barber; we returned a half hour later and there was the result. Everybody looked at this face with consternation. Naturally, my mother and my grandmother let out shrieks of horror and declared that I looked vile. And, as a matter of fact, I still have a photo of myself at just about that age: I was ugly. It was like a flash of lightning. I began to understand that what my locks had adorned was not very pretty.

And then I remained at peace with myself until the age of ten or ten and a half. But, starting with La Rochelle, things became unpleasant. The incident of Lisette turned out badly, in part, on account of my ugliness. My classmates, who knew me and felt that I was ugly, made of that meeting a kind of mockery of my ugliness. So it stuck, it became a part of me.

[Q] Chaine: Was it very painful?

[A] Sartre: Painful, yes. But not for long.

[Q] Chaine: Did you think that your ugliness was a handicap against seducing girls?

[A] Sartre: No, not really. Perhaps because I imagined relationships with girls as being lengthy conversations on a beach in the moonlight. Whether one is handsome or ugly is of no great importance when one is engaged in conversation.

[Q] Chaine: When were you in love for the first time?

[A] Sartre: I was 16 years old. It was Paris, in 1921. She was the daughter of the high school janitor.

[Q] Chaine: Was that typical of that time?

[A] Sartre: Ah, well, that depended on the personalities involved. Some went all the way, no doubt. But it was still rather rare. In the final analysis, perhaps a third or only a quarter of the students were no longer virgins in their senior year. We were more innocent than nowadays. Almost like children.

[Q] Chaine: You were raised in a rather strict (continued on page 116)Jean-Paul Sartre(continued from page 104) environment. Did you feel guilty?

[A] Sartre: Oh, no, not at all, not guilty about anything. I had put matters right with my family, I already had my freedom.

[Q] Chaine: Had you already cast off taboos of that kind?

[A] Sartre: Of that kind, yes. Right away.

[Q] Chaine: How did you manage that?

[A] Sartre: By reading, first of all. Trashy stuff, for the most part. The books came down hard on relations with women, but, as I saw it, that was just hypocrisy. I believed that real relations with women had to be complete sexual relationships and that everything I read was just novelistic sham.

[Q] Chaine: But what about your strict upbringing?

[A] Sartre: Not all that strict, because I was a boy, after all--but still quite strict.

[Q] Chaine: So you could make love to the high school janitor's daughter without feeling guilty?

[A] Sartre: Yes; and, in fact, I went all the way only during the following year, with the girls we would meet in the Luxembourg Gardens.

[Q] Chaine: Getting back to the idea of marriage: Even as an adolescent, did you really never think of getting married like everybody else?

[A] Sartre: You know, the idea of marriage has never plagued me. Still, I got engaged in earnest when I was 23. I had met a girl who was the cousin of one of my friends from the university. It was in Usson-en-Forez, where I'd gone to spend a few days of vacation with that friend, and there I fell in love. In love: That's saying a great deal, but the girl in question, who was from Lyons, really took my fancy. I think she was in need of passion, and that's what caused her to exaggerate her feelings for me.

As for her parents, they looked at the financial side of it. What was I? A student at the state university? I wouldn't be worth marrying until after I'd passed my state boards, two years later. Since they wanted to find out more, they had me tailed by a private detective who told them that at school I'd been heard to speak about my fiancée in unpleasant and even vulgar terms. It was altogether untrue; but they repeated it to my fiancée and she took it very badly. I then wrote to her, telling her not to pay any attention to all that and that, in any case, we were still engaged.

And then I crammed for the state boards. When, in spite of everything, I sent my family to ask for her hand, her parents absolutely refused. It left me in a strange mood, a mood of real anger.

[Q] Chaine: You were angry?

[A] Sartre: Yes. And, most of all, I thought that it would be upsetting to her. I returned to Usson and went over in my mind what had happened; and I remember that I went alone into a meadow with a bottle and there I drank ... I even cried. I also cried because I had drunk, but that was OK. I don't want to say that I did it on purpose, but I was content to pay my dues with those few tears. I was comforted. I'm not sure that I acted quite correctly in that whole episode....

[Q] Chaine: It was around then that Simone de Beauvoir must have seen you for the first time in the corridors of the Sorbonne. She describes you as having been conceited, very badly dressed and quite dirty. Was there something intentional about your unkempt appearance?

[A] Sartre: Yes. And I was not the only one to be so "unkempt." It was also the case with Paul Nizan, René Maheu and some others. But then again, Nizan and Maheu exuded a certain elegance, because their amorous experience was more extensive than my own. Theirs was, for the most part, the uncleanliness of the morning. The custom was to get up and wash oneself just a bit.

[Q] Chaine: Your male friends had more extensive love lives?

[A] Sartre: Yes, because they had girls in Paris, whereas I was having only one affair in Toulouse with the daughter of a pharmacist.

[Q] Chaine: In another interview, you said that during that period you envisioned your private life as a sequence of amenities: women, good meals, travel, etc. Somewhat one-dimensional, in other words.

[A] Sartre: It was a mixture. I was somewhat boorish in thinking that I could easily start relationships with any attractive woman. I looked at things that way for a long time. At the same time, however, I wanted to have deep relationships with women. Sex was not the predominant factor. It served to attract, but the main thing was the tenderness that changed into something very profound--something that was not always bound to the sex life and that at that moment caused each of us to be himself at the very depths of himself. That which each of us had that was beyond compare--because it was that which made him himself and not another.

[Q] Chaine: How did your meeting with Simone de Beauvoir take place? Were you immediately aware of how important she would become to you?

[A] Sartre: Not immediately. Our relationship began in a strange way. I used to see her during classes at the Sorbonne. I liked her. I found her appealing. Good-looking but poorly dressed. I did not speak to her. Her closest friend was Maheu. One day he said to me, "Why don't you get to know each other?" I replied, "Why not? Make a date for me." That's how it came about. I invited her to a pastry shop on the Rue de Médicis. But wouldn't you know it? Maheu was playing a trick on me. Simone de Beauvoir was supposed to send her younger sister to the meeting. And I had to spend the evening with her sister--whom I didn't find appealing. Later, I got to like her, after she'd become a friend, but then I was furious.

Finally, two or three days later, Simone de Beauvoir and I did meet each other. Along with Maheu, Nizan and Raymond Aron, we decided to prepare for the state boards together. We would spend two or three hours with our friends, studying a Greek text or a problem of philosophy, and afterward, Simone de Beauvoir and I would leave them and go for a walk through Paris. We were always together.

[Q] Chaine: Did the relationship become intimate right away?

[A] Sartre: The actual intimate relationship came later, in November, although we had known each other since the beginning of July. But, in fact, there was no problem.

[Q] Chaine: De Beauvoìr, in her memoirs, suggests that your feelings were reciprocated right away.

[A] Sartre: Yes, right away, I think. We got to know each other better during the summer vacation. One day, I was sitting next to her on the grass. I don't think we were very close to each other, but then her father and mother appeared--very much taken aback. I assured them of the sincerity of my feelings, but that didn't sit very well. I don't think that her father told me to leave. In any case, I stayed. I must have stayed five days and I left on the day of my choice.

[Q] Chaine: And eventually it became a contract for life?

[A] Sartre: Yes.

[Q] Chaine: Wasn't that distressing to you? You have said that the transition to adulthood was very difficult for you. Didn't that commitment make it even more difficult?

[A] Sartre: No, not really. What distressed me was the social life of a university town in the countryside, which was new to me: my colleagues, their wives, the headmaster. It struck me as awful.

[Q] Chaine: "We never became estranged from each other, never did one of us appeal in vain to the other." That is De Beauvoir writing in The Coming of Age. Haven't you ever resented that as a restriction?

[A] Sartre: Oh, no, never! I never resented my relationship with Simone de Beauvoir as being restrictive. Not from any point of view. We were able to do absolutely anything for each other: It was always spontaneous. And particularly since, as you are aware, almost from the start we contemplated the possibility of relationships with others.

[Q] Chaine: That pact that you made with each other--not to dissemble, not to lie, not to have secrets--did you hold to it?

[A] Sartre: Yes, all the way. Now and then, it amuses Simone de Beauvoir to say that I've failed to tell her something, that I've hidden some detail from her. But it's not true.

[Q] Chaine: Have you never hidden anything from her?

[A] Sartre: Never.

[Q] Chaine: Is that important?

[A] Sartre: Oh, yes, it's very important not to hide anything. Even at that, I am readily tempted to hide things from people, to be a little bit deceptive. But never with her.

[Q] Chaine: Why this truthfulness at any cost?

[A] Sartre: Because our relationship seemed to me to be of greater value, in essence, than the relationships that I had with other men and with other women during the same period. All right; I was a male chauvinist; but when I met Simone de Beauvoir, I felt I had found the best relationship that I could ever have with anyone. The most complete relationship. I'm not talking about sex or about intimacy, but rather about conversations on the vital decisions in our life. Indeed, a relationship of such completeness made for a profound equality between us. We could not conceive of ourselves as being otherwise. I had found a woman who was the equal of what I was as a man--and it was that, I believe, that rescued me from out-and-out male chauvinism. The woman had assumed her true place.

[Q] Chaine: Would you have been able to have such a complete relationship with a woman who was a sculptress or a physician, who had never studied philosophy?

[A] Sartre: I am utterly unable to tell you that. What I can tell you, though, is that I have never talked about philosophy with the women who've had relationships with me. But I've always spoken to Simone de Beauvoir about my philosophy. When I was performing my military service, for example, she used to visit me on Saturdays and Sundays in Tours, and I would tell her that during the week I had had this or that idea, or that I'd thought about such and such. It was a way of refining my ideas. With my friends, such as Maheu and Nizan, I would talk a little about my "theories," as I said, but that was a luxury. It was something that I would allow myself to do in the course of an evening get-together, where we were especially at ease. In fact, I have never really talked about my theories with anyone but her.

[Q] Chaine: So the two of you decided from the very start that your love affair was a necessary one but that each of you would have other affairs.

[A] Sartre: I no longer remember those conversations very well, but I know that Simone de Beauvoir agreed to that, as being valid for her, too. She realized that it was best for her to have relationships with several men, and she didn't want her relationship with me to prevent her from having them. And, thus, her idea of relationships with others was in the plural--or, rather, pluralistic. She did not think that a sex life ought to be defined solely by a relationship with just one man.

[Q] Chaine: Why are other love affairs indispensable?

[A] Sartre: For the very reason that one has other friendships and other relationships with people! There is no reason for the existence of this particular "first principle," which obviously has its origins in marriage and the Church. Actually, the sexual relationship is not linked to any specific form of social organization. Some new relationships came into being with Simone de Beauvoir, but it was always taken for granted that men should have relationships with more than one woman. Consequently, I believed in both the primary and the transitory relationships at the same time. It was quite difficult, but, despite that, I have had them both. For the most part, my relations with Simone de Beauvoir have been essential relations--and they still are--and, as for my relations with other women, they were on a secondary level.

[Q] Chaine: And the other women didn't mind being secondary?

[A] Sartre: On the whole, they did. They weren't very happy about it. I didn't pretend. I would tell the woman whom I was starting to date: There's this woman named Simone de Beauvoir who's the end-all of my life. They just had to put up with it.

[Q] Chaine: Weren't there also some women who regarded you as a secondary love?

[A] Sartre: That didn't happen to me during the period we're talking about. And if it happened to me later, I wasn't told so. I wouldn't have liked it at all.

[Q] Chaine: Did that need for diversity strike you as natural?

[A] Sartre: Yes, but at the same time, I had acquired the idea--a new one--that I had one essential relationship and that it was the one with Simone de Beauvoir.

[Q] Chaine: Essential but not sufficient?

[A] Sartre: It was sufficient in practically every way.

[Q] Chaine: So why the other women?

[A] Sartre: Probably because the physical relationship per se involves more than one woman or more than one man. It is a relationship that is not clearly defined. You have a sexual relationship. Fine. But with whom? With one person or with 15? Nothing is said about that in the sexual relationship per se.

And then, too, because, as I have told you, I thought that between a man and a woman, as soon as their relationship is somewhat complete, depth is achieved. Whoever the man may be and whoever the woman. And, consequently, the very deep--no, the unique--relationship that joined me to Simone de Beauvoir was the best and the loftiest relationship, but it didn't prevent me from being able to have a deep relationship with any other woman. And that presupposed, moreover, that I would adapt myself to the social or intellectual level of the woman whom I was seeing. If that woman happened to be not very highly developed in her intelligence, but if the relationship between us was a deep one, then I myself, on that occasion, would not emphasize my intelligence.

I would not try to outflank culturally a person who might have been a bit less intelligent than I. Because she would bring something that then became part of my world. That is the nature of the relationship that I have had with women--one in depth that now and then comes to create what is almost an individual entity--an us that is not two yous but that is truly an us. That us is something that I have had all my life with Simone de Beauvoir and at certain times during which I was, in actual fact, deeply linked to other women.

Outside of a relationship of this nature, we succumb to trickery and to contrivance--the very stuff out of which all the novels and stage plays are stamped, and I have always regarded that behavior as dreadful.

[Q] Chaine: In practice, was the freedom in your relationship as easy for De Beauvoir as it was for you? In her memoirs, she says that when you were seeing "M" in the United States, she was "terrified." She wondered whether the two of you might become strangers to each other.

[A] Sartre: I believe there was a misunderstanding between us at that time. Here's how it happened: The woman whom she refers to as M had come to spend several months in France. During that time, Simone de Beauvoir had gone to America, to Chicago, where she met Nelson Algren. Upon her return, the two of us (continued on page 124)Jean-Paul Sartre(continued from page 118) met in Copenhagen, where we spent a fortnight. Then we traveled together to the vicinity of Fontainebleau. This double changing of partners--with her going with Nelson Algren and me with M--produced a strain in our relationship. But it was just a misunderstanding.

[Q] Chaine: The fact remains that De Beauvoir was afraid, but you were not.

[A] Sartre: I wasn't afraid, because I recognized as valid everything that she had told me. But she did misunderstand what I had told her. One evening, she asked me, "What does M mean to you? Is she very important?" And, as a matter of fact, she was very important at that time. I replied, "She means a great deal, but isn't it a fact that I am with you?" This response--which, I must admit, wasn't very nice--was, nevertheless, intended as affectionate. It was intended to mean: What is true, what is deep, is the relationship between us two.

[Q] Chaine: That wasn't very clear.

[A] Sartre: No, but it was completely sincere. She didn't understand that. She found my reply ambiguous and, for some days--oh, for a very short time, perhaps a month--she continued to be downcast. As far as I know, it was the only time that we ever had a quarrel.

[Q] Chaine: Was M less "secondary" than the other women?

[A] Sartre: Obviously, it had started out as something more--how should I say ... ? It's because it was in America. Because it was in New York. Ordinarily, you must realize, the women whom I saw were of the same air and soil as Simone de Beauvoir. There was nothing "exotic" about them. But when I went to New York, it was a place where Simone de Beauvoir had never been. A place of which she knew absolutely nothing. And it was there that I experienced a rebirth of sorts. It created in me, as it were, a parallel life. And then, only naturally, this impression was reinforced each time that I was in America and saw M. In France, it was nothing at all like that: There I saw things in their proper light, including the absolute superiority of Simone de Beauvoir.

[Q] Chaine: And when De Beauvoir was seeing Algren, were you ever jealous?

[A] Sartre: Never. On the contrary, my heart was with her.

[Q] Chaine: Is jealousy a feeling you have never known?

[A] Sartre: In general, yes.

[Q] Chaine: And in particular?

[A] Sartre: Oh, on occasion, I've experienced a bit of jealousy. Not, however, on account of Simone de Beauvoir. Rather, it would manifest itself as a secondary feeling, which I could allow myself with other women. But with Simone de Beauvoir, I believed our relationship to be such that even an amorous adventure with a man like Nelson Algren did not concern me. It didn't deprive me of anything--which must sound very conceited.

[Q] Chaine: Do you think that your relationship with her could be duplicated by other couples? What are the requisites for success?

[A] Sartre: First of all, a certain similarity of cultures between the man and the woman. If one of them has a culture that is superior to that of the other, he can draw his inspiration from that culture in order to justify the structure of the relationship, but the other person will not understand him. It is necessary to view the world in the same way.

The second requisite is to realize that the relationship that you have with the other person is superior to those relationships that you might have with all other persons. This type of relationship did not correspond to my original idea: I had been fond of imagining a succession of women, each of them representing everything for me at a given time. Such were the qualities of Simone de Beauvoir that caused her to take up the place that she enjoys in my life and that no other person could occupy. But, all the same, I've held on to something from former days with those contingent loves, which could be strong but which, in any case, could never be comparable. In no way. That did not become apparent in a week but, rather, in three or four years: We understood then what we meant to each other.

[Q] Chaine: Are you sure that there could not have been two or three essential loves?

[A] Sartre: There could have been only one. In the sense that there could not have been two Simone de Beauvoirs. Moreover, I would have gained little from it. I would have been split up. I would no longer have understood. If you give everything to a second person, those two persons will not receive it in the same way and you will be continually in contradiction with yourself.

[Q] Chaine: What is the advantage of the sort of permanence you've had with De Beauvoir?

[A] Sartre: It's a tremendous advantage, because a couple--at a certain time in their lives--have a certain vision of things, of the events and the people around them. Ten years later, so many things have changed. That means simply that you have changed. If you have changed alone, haphazardly, you will have a new way of seeing things that will be different from the old way, but that's all. However, if you live with another person, you will be able to try to decide mutually just what has changed: how you used to see things, how--ten years earlier--this or that friend, acquaintance, adventure or occurrence used to be. You will be able to put things in order, to revitalize them somewhat, to spruce up what had been in disarray--all of which is possible only with another person. And it is necessary that that person have a sexual relationship with you, since there will be some things that are sexual and other things that will be connected to the sexual, though not sexual in themselves. It is thus necessary to be able to find that unity of ideas that enables us--Simone de Beauvoir and I--to understand each other when we've barely opened our mouths.

[Q] Chaine: Have you ever been spurned?

[A] Sartre: Not more than once. You know, relationships between men and women are so complicated.... The fact of being accepted at the outset is only the beginning. There are a lot of other acceptances or refusals later on that are more important.

[Q] Chaine: What attracts you at first in a woman?

[A] Sartre: Her appearance and her charm. I see a woman in a restaurant or a café and I like her because of her face and her body, because of what she says, the prospects that open up. She says, "I would like to do this, I would like to do that," and I think that if I knew her, it would be fun to do it with her. You see, nothing extraordinary or very special.

[Q] Chaine: But all the women with whom you've been associated have been quite pretty.

[A] Sartre: Well, I admit it. I think that for sexual relations to have a real meaning, in the majority of cases, the woman must have something that attracts the man physically. Call it pretty, if you like; it can be something else. There are women who aren't pretty but who have charm. That's hardly a feminist answer I've just given you, but, unfortunately, it's a fact. So then, what happens to the other women, to those who don't attract? Well, I don't have an answer, but the problem should not be ignored. I think feminists tend to ignore that question somewhat.

[Q] Chaine: Since you've said you think of yourself as rather ugly, do you think it's less awkward for a man than for a woman to lack good looks?

(concluded on page 239)Jean-Paul Sartre(continued from page 124)

[A] Sartre: I don't think it's very important. I mean, of course, if you have an eye in the middle of your mouth, it's a little troublesome. But being ugly, even outstandingly so--you said I think of myself as rather ugly; you're very kind. I find myself very ugly. Well, even outstanding ugliness is not awkward.

[Q] Chaine: Your circle of friends is almost exclusively made up of women. Why do you prefer their company?

[A] Sartre: Because I always love what a woman says, what she does. Even if she is very unpleasant and says stupid things, I don't care.

[Q] Chaine: Why?

[A] Sartre: I love their sensitivity, their way of being. I love the profoundness of their conversation. They take things as they should, without any relationship to a profession or to a job. Of course, women who earn their living are a little influenced by their profession. But, even so, one always has the impression they see the outside world in a new way. A woman always sees things and people better. She notices right away a certain manner, a certain gesture that characterizes someone, that reveals something about him; and she's capable of expressing it. You would never have that in a conversation with a man.

[Q] Chaine: Women understand people better?

[A] Sartre: Much better. Listen to a father and a mother speak about their child; the mother will speak about him much better than the father. It is also true of a woman's insights into her husband or her lover. What she says about him is much more delicate, more psychologically true than what a man will say about his wife or his mistress.

[Q] Chaine: You have said that you felt "a kind of woman in you." Is that because you, too, have that sense of understanding?

[A] Sartre: I think so. Not only am I comfortable with women but women are comfortable with me. I have to say it, since they say it. They like to spend time with me.

[Q] Chaine: Because of your sensitivity?

[A] Sartre: Probably.

[Q] Chaine: What role has your fame played in your relationship with women?

[A] Sartre: It is responsible for starting the relationships. That seems certain to me. Afterward, I try to change that abstract reputation to something more personal and specific, so that eventually the notion of my fame disappears.

[Q] Chaine: Do you feel responsible for the women with whom you become involved?

[A] Sartre: Perhaps it's a leftover from machismo, but I have always felt a great responsibility toward the women with whom I've been involved. Responsibility in the emotional dealings, naturally, but also responsibility for their life in general; for their careers, for their finances. If I can help a woman, I help her. And I know these days it isn't looked well upon--especially to give a woman money. But I want a woman to have moments of profoundness that are also mine: for her to be completely mine and me completely hers. So, if I can help her on a level other than the emotional one, if I can help her earn her living by finding her an interesting occupation, or if I give her money because she doesn't have any, then I love to do it. For me, that is not "keeping" her. It's helping in the development of someone who is not totally what she should be.

Often, I love it when a woman feels that, at least for a while, she owes everything to her relationship with me. That's extreme, I know. I should not be that way. I realize it's machismo. One has to make his time and his money available to the woman one loves. But the money one gives her shouldn't prevent her from earning money herself.

[Q] Chaine: Knowing the importance of women in your life, going without them must seem one of the worst prospects for you.

[A] Sartre: Absolutely. The year I fought in the war and the following year, when I was a prisoner, were unpleasant. I had been involved with women--with Simone de Beauvoir and with others. At first, I was able to maintain the relationships through letters. But afterward, when I was a prisoner and the letters were no longer getting through, I had to count on their patience, their affection. I was certainly counting on the affection of Simone de Beauvoir, but the others, for a lot of reasons, I couldn't be sure of. And I was rather worried about that. Certainly more than many other men who were in the same situation as I.

[Q] Chaine: Would you say it was the tenderness that you missed the most?

[A] Sartre: Yes. If I did not put much of it in my novels, it's probably because it was too much mine for me to want to dash it on paper.

[Q] Chaine: If you were 20 years old today, would you want to live the same life?

[A] Sartre: Why not? Yes, I think so. I certainly wouldn't abandon Simone de Beauvoir. That would be the most important thing.

[Q] Chaine: Have women made you happy?

[A] Sartre: Above all else, they have brought me happiness. Women have rarely imposed unhappiness on me.... Sometimes, when things don't work out. But in general, they have brought me happiness.

"I was somewhat boorish in thinking that I could easily start relationships with any attractive woman."

"I see a woman in a restaurant or a café and I like her because of her face and body, of what she says."

"I always love what a woman says, what she does. Even if she is very unpleasant, I don't care."