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A Very Easy Death
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BetaPages 110-132Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Pages 110-114 Summary
Content Warning: This section of the guide and the source material refer to terminal illness and death, bereavement, addiction, and suicide.
Beauvoir writes that Françoise had feared cancer her whole life, but at the nursing home she never suspected she had it instead of peritonitis. Even on her worst day she doesn’t ask for a priest and dismisses her friends’ suggestion to summon one. Her friends blame Simone and Hélène for Françoise’s apparent rejection of her faith at the end of her life, but they have nothing to do with it. In the clinic Françoise wants to be surrounded by young, carefree people, not to discuss death with her old, devout friends. Nevertheless, Beauvoir regrets not telling her mother that she was dying in case that would’ve changed whether she wanted to see a priest.
Beauvoir interprets Françoise’s putting aside of religion as true devotion, not impiety. In Françoise’s personal papers Beauvoir sees that her mother had a deep, lifelong faith; some papers show that Françoise viewed prayer as something requiring concentration and energy, not a rote exercise that could be performed at any time. To Beauvoir this explains her mother’s apparent rejection of the rites of faith in her final weeks.
Beauvoir identifies with her mother’s rebellion against death. She sides with her mother against Françoise’s friends, who wonder how such a pious woman could fear death, and against those who in her mother’s final days write to her about the recently published third volume of Simone’s autobiography, The Force of Circumstance. Some admonish Simone that, had she kept her faith, she wouldn’t fear death; others assure Simone that her books themselves give her immortality. Beauvoir reflects that only those who don’t love life—such as her passionless grandmother and her embittered father—can resign themselves to death. Françoise rebelled against death because she loved life like Simone does: “Religion could do no more for my mother than the hope of posthumous success could do for me” (113).
Pages 115-117 Summary
Beauvoir considers whether keeping the diagnosis from her mother and allowing her to be operated on were the right decisions. Beauvoir reasons that knowing she had cancer would have overwhelmed her mother’s final days with dread. Furthermore, Françoise loved life so the extra four to six weeks granted by the operation were a gift; however, these weeks also brought Françoise anxiety and suffering.
The reprieve granted by operation is also complicated for Simone and Hélène. On the one hand, they endure the torment seeing their mother suffer terrible physical and spiritual pain and being helpless to stop it; on the other, this reprieve allows them to reconcile with their mother and atone for their distance from her in the years preceding her death. If Françoise had died suddenly, Simone knows she and her sister would’ve been torn by regret over never reconciling with Françoise.
Finally, Beauvoir reflects that her mother did indeed die an easy death. She did not die as a poor person does, alone and in agony among indifferent doctors and nurses in a public ward: “No hand on the forehead when terror seizes them; no sedative as soon as pain begins to tear them; no lying prattle to fill the silence of the void” (117). Françoise dies an easy death: a bourgeois death.
Pages 118-124 Summary
The morning after Françoise’s death Hélène and Simone return to the clinic to clear out her things. Beauvoir notes that, as in a hotel, one has to check out by noon. An unfinished piece of her mother’s knitting evokes a wave of emotion in Simone. After they’ve collected Françoise’s things, Simone and Hélène decide against visiting Françoise’s body in the nearby mortuary. Instead, they make funeral arrangements. That night Simone can’t sleep: She wishes she had spent more time with her mother’s body, as she had with her father’s. This had made it easier to accept his death.
The funeral is two days later. In his sermon the priest talks about how far away God is even to the most devout. Beauvoir reflects that, although all people die, they all die alone, no matter the circumstance: “We never left Maman during those last days which she confused with convalescence and yet we were profoundly separated from her” (123).
Pages 125-132 Summary
Beauvoir ponders why her mother’s death affected her so much given that in adulthood Beauvoir was mostly indifferent toward her. There are three main reasons. First, though Simone had already been at the bedside of three people when they died, she had never seen true death until she saw her mother’s: “the Death that comes from elsewhere, strange and inhuman” (129). Second, Simone feels guilty about lying to her mother because it made her complicit in the deception Françoise suffered her whole life. Finally, both the beloved mother of Simone’s childhood and the tyrant of her adolescence were contained in the elderly Françoise; memory compressed these different Françoises into one. Thus, when Simone mourns the protector, she also mourns the tyrant.
Simone finds photographs from when she was 18 and Françoise was 40. In her mother’s expression Simone reads ignorance and hopelessness; in her own she sees the sadness her mother inflicted. In her final weeks, Françoise relinquishes the conformity that made her resent her daughter, allowing her true nature to reappear: “She got rid of the ready-made notions that hid her sincere and lovable side. It was then that I felt the warmth of an affection that had often been distorted by jealousy and that she expressed so badly” (127). In Françoise’s personal papers Simone finds assurance that her mother always loved her, even if her expression of it was distorted by jealousy. Among the papers are letters from a friend and a priest reassuring Françoise that Simone will return to her and to God. In her journal Françoise writes that she only wants to go to heaven if her daughters join her.
Finally, Beauvoir reflects on the fallacy of the common refrain—that she herself invoked after her mother fell—that after a certain age death is unsurprising and therefore unworthy of grief. No death is natural: Everyone is killed by some failure of their body that, even if identified, is an “unjustifiable violation” of their right to live (130). Françoise clung to every instant because she loved life; to her death was this unjustifiable violation.
Pages 110-132 Analysis
The theme of these final pages is The Affirmation of Life, expressed in Françoise’s tenacity for life in her final moments, her changed attitude toward her faith, and the bittersweet late reconciliation of the family which affirms the meaning of Françoise’s life. Once a rigid Catholic, Françoise stops adhering to strict orthodoxy as her health declines: She stops praying and shuns priests and pious friends. Beauvoir’s analysis is that this isn’t because she loses faith, but because she chooses her will to live over the Catholic embrace of the afterlife:
She knew what she ought to have said to God — ‘Heal me. But Thy will be done: I acquiesce in death.’ She did not acquiesce. In this moment of truth she did not choose to utter insincere words. (112)
Françoise neither prays to God for recovery nor acquiesces if it’s his will for her to die. She stops subordinating herself to a higher power as she’s done her entire life, whether it be God, the mother superior, or her husband, and supports herself. This isn’t a complete renunciation—she retains her belief in God—but it’s affirmation of the inherent validity of her thoughts, her feelings.
Françoise’s reconciliation with herself isn’t complete, nor could it be. Living authentically doesn’t mean being in perfect harmony with oneself. Instead, it means navigating our conflicts with ourselves and the world in a clear-eyed, brave manner. Françoise doesn’t renounce her former self; she adjusts it: “Confined to her bed, she decided to live for herself; and yet at the same time she retained an unvarying care for others—from her conflicts there arose a harmony” (127). As the oxymoron of conflict and harmony suggests, “harmony” doesn’t mean agreement but rather coexistence. Françoise doesn’t react to her past self-abnegation by becoming completely selfish; she balances her care for others with her own needs. This is authenticity. Not the unequivocal, completed realization of yourself but on ongoing presence with yourself through the flux of life.
Beauvoir’s reflections in these final pages complicate The Lie of an Easy Death. After her mother’s death Beauvoir views the reprieve afforded by medical intervention more positively. Whether Françoise would’ve chosen the reprieve from these life-prolonging treatments if she had known she were dying remains an unanswerable question; all Beauvoir speculates is that the treatments gave her mother—someone who loved every moment of life with tenacity—an extra month of life. What is apparent is the benefit the reprieve had for Simone (and Hélène): It allowed them to reconcile with Françoise and thus avoid the regret of if she had died while they were still distant: “We felt that we atoned for this [distance] by the days that we gave up to her, by the peace that our being there gave her, and by the victories gained over fear and pain” (116). Combined with the fact that Simone and Hélène get a month to prepare themselves for their mother’s death, it’s clear that medical intervention makes Françoise’s death easier for them; an easy death is as much about comforting the dying as it is about comforting their loved ones.
Simone reconciles herself to her decision to withhold the fact of Françoise’s imminent death, but she doesn’t justify it in an attempt to assuage her guilt. She reflects that people all have to face death alone (127). Simone’s lie to her mother separated the two, and Françoise faced death alone. Simone both abhors her decision and sees a benefit in it: “I found this ultimate deception revolting. I was making myself an accomplice of that fate which was so misusing her. Yet at the same time in every cell of my body I joined in her refusal, in her rebellion” (127). Françoise rebels against her sickness and, unknowingly, against death; Beauvoir identifies with this will to live. Beauvoir’s implication in this quote is that her mother would’ve lacked this tenacity had she known she was dying, that she would’ve given into despair and resignation. If Françoise had died in this way, Simone wouldn’t have been able to reconcile herself to her mother through their shared will to live. This is the fear buried in Beauvoir’s above quote: That if her mother had, as a result of the terminal diagnosis, slipped back into bitterness and continued to turn away from life, that Simone’s feelings of disdain for and disappointment in her mother wouldn’t have transformed into admiration and acceptance like they did.
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By Simone de Beauvoir
