The words of Simone de Beauvoir in “La Femme ruptured” at the Théâtre du Pavé in Toulouse

Political and social commitment deeply marked the writings of Simone de Beauvoir, notably in “La Femme Rompue”, where she subtly examines the inner conflicts and struggles of women in contemporary society. To write this monologue, performed by the actress Vanessa Roma, Simone de Beauvoir was inspired by the numerous intimate correspondences she had with her readers. Women destroyed by life, society, patriarchy.

“Happy people have no history,” said the author of “Second Sex.” “It is in disarray, sadness, when we feel broken or dispossessed of ourselves that we feel the need to tell our stories. […] The broken woman is the stunned victim of the life she has chosen: a marital dependence which leaves her stripped of everything and of her being even when love is refused to her.

“The Broken Woman” is a plunge into the thoughts of Murielle, a lonely, abandoned, misanthropic woman, struggling in her own reality to avoid sinking. From this cry of despair spring crude, acerbic, stinging words, marked by bad faith, towards the entire society which she judges solely responsible for her ill-being.

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“This monologue, written in 1967, remains astonishingly modern,” says Anabel Dufort, who directed the work. “It echoes women, those who are imprisoned in their suffering, their solitude, confronted with the dictates of society and what will be said, those who cannot free themselves, to emancipate oneself.”