A Disgraceful Affair: Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Bianca Lamblin – Women’s Life Writings from Around the World

Bianca Bienenfeld was a seventeen-year-old lycee student when she was seduced both intellectually and sexually by her philosophy professor, Simone de Beauvoir, in 1938. The following year de Beauvoir passed Bianca on to her “essential partner,” Jean-Paul Sartre. The three formed a menage a trois until 1940, when Bianca was suddenly abandoned by her dual mentors and lovers. Their lack of concern for Bianca’s fate as a Jew in occupied France made the abrupt break even more shattering for her. She began to suffer periodic bouts of severe depression linked not only to the Nazi horrors, but to the betrayal by de Beauvoir and Sartre.
After World War II, Bianca Bienenfeld (now married to Bernard Lamblin) resumed a platonic friendship with de Beauvoir that lasted more than forty years, but the pain of the old, perturbing affair flooded back when, in 1990, she read de Beauvoir’s posthumously published Letters to Sartre and War Journal. The intimate content of these books referred directly to Bianca in a tone of ridicule and contempt, and she finally discovered the full extent of de Beauvoir’s deception.
Now Bianca explodes with the true story behind her earlier relationship with the high priests of existentialism. Published here in English for the first time, her memoir reveals what it was like to be a third party in the “contingent” affairs of de Beauvoir and Sartre. Bianca’s compelling narrative is not written out of revenge or retaliation. Rather, it is an eloquent, candid account of how de Beauvoir and Sartre influenced the shape of her life and how she survived a disgraceful affair that, when broken, almost broke her.
Bianca’s unique perspective on de Beauvoir and Sartre is the central focus of the book, but not the sole one. She writes about her love for her husband Bernard, who helped her recover. She also describes life during the dark times of German occupation, and recounts witnessing the battle of Vercors during the French Resistance. Her well-crafted and poignant memoir will appeal to scholars and general readers alike.