January 12, 2025 • 64 mins
What makes Simone de Beauvoir one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century? In this episode of Join Us in France, titled Simone de Beauvoir: Life, Legacy, and Controversies, host Annie Sargent and guest Elyse Rivin delve into the extraordinary life of this feminist icon, philosopher, and writer. Whether you’ve read her groundbreaking work The Second Sex or are curious about her impact on women’s rights and existential philosophy, this episode offers something for everyone.
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Annie and Elyse explore de Beauvoir’s early life in a conservative Catholic family, her intellectual partnership with Jean-Paul Sartre, and her rise as a leading voice in feminist thought. They discuss her prolific writing, including her acclaimed novels and controversial essays, and how her work challenged societal norms about women, equality, and freedom. From her intellectual pursuits to her complex personal life, Simone de Beauvoir’s story is as inspiring as it is thought-provoking.
This episode also touches on de Beauvoir’s political views, her role in post-World War II intellectual circles, and her lasting influence on modern feminism. Whether you’re a history enthusiast or a fan of French culture, this conversation will give you fresh insights into a truly remarkable figure.
Don’t miss this engaging episode. Tune in to learn more about Simone de Beauvoir’s legacy and discover why her ideas still resonate today. Listen now!
Table of Contents for this Episode
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Annie (00:15):
This is Join Us in France, episode 528, cinq cent vingt-huit.
Bonjour, I'm Annie Sargent, and Join Usin France is the podcast where we take
a conversational journey through thebeauty, culture, and flavors of France.
Today, I bring you a conversationwith Elyse Rivin of Toulouse Guided
Walks about Simone de Beauvoir.
(00:39):
Discover the fascinating life ofthis pioneering feminist, writer, and
intellectual who challenged societalnorms and left an indelible mark
on women's rights and philosophy.
She's been turned into a bit ofa boogeyman by some, but you'll
see that she made a lot of sense.
This podcast is supported by donorsand listeners who buy my tours and
(01:00):
services, including my ItineraryConsult Service, my GPS self-guided
tours of Paris on the VoiceMap app,or take a day trip with me around the
southwest of France in my electric car.
You can browse all of that at myboutique: joinusinfrance.com/boutique.
Patreon supporters get new episodesas soon as they are ready and ad-free.
(01:23):
If that sounds good to you, be likethem, follow the link in the show notes.
For the Magazine part of thepodcast, after my chat with Elyse
today, I'll discuss the changesto rental rules that took effect
in France, on January 1st, 2025.
They represent a significant shift thatcould affect your travel experience going
(01:43):
forward, so I thought you'd like to know.
Bonjour, Elyse.
Elyse (01:56):
Bonjour, Annie.
Annie (01:57):
We have a fantastic topic today, someone that I
didn't know that much about.
I only read one of her booksvery recently, but you had
read more of her stuff.
We're talking about Simone de Beauvoir.
Elyse (02:13):
This is in a series of extraordinary women that
we started with Simone Veil,
Annie (02:22):
so, Elyse, as always, I'm going to let you take it away because you like
to do the biography type things, andthen I will jump in to add my bit here.
Elyse (02:31):
Jump, jump, jump, jump, my froggy friend.
There you go.
Okay, so let's talk about Simone deBeauvoir, I don't know how many more
Simones we're going to have, but thereseem to be quite a few out there.
Simone de Beauvoir is really famous, I'dsay famous now, because this is a woman
who was born in 1908 and died in 1986.
(02:54):
And was extremely influential inintellectual circles, and thinking
circles, certainly in the mid20th century, and a bit less as
we get towards the end of the 20thcentury, interestingly enough.
But she is really known as being one ofthe founders of the feminist movement,
and I mean that in its largest sense,because it's, you can argue that feminism
(03:20):
is a bit different in each country, andthat it has taken certain turns, and
that the young women today do not havethe same exact definition of feminism as
perhaps was the case post World War II.
But she is definitely one of the peoplewho is a founding member of the thinking
behind feminism and certainly claimed itas a term that she herself wanted to use.
Annie (03:48):
Right.
And so she is most famousfor the book The Second Sex.
But she was also a prolific writer.
She wrote many other things, andI think she was a really good
writer, as a matter of fact.
I mean, even though I hadn't readmuch, the one that I did read,
I thought it was very well...
Elyse (04:06):
Which on did you read?
Annie (04:06):
It was the one about the death of her mother.
She wrote that late.
Elyse (04:10):
She wrote that late.
And interestingly enough, Jean PaulSartre, who is of course, extremely
important in her life and is anintellectual, very important in
France, said that it was her bestpiece of writing, interestingly enough.
Annie (04:23):
I am not surprised.
It was, in English it's called 'A VeryEasy Death', and it's a very good book,
like you can really relate to whatshe's talking about, seeing her mother
get old and get very sick and die.
Elyse (04:40):
Just like Annie Arnaud, the Nobel Prize winner, when we
read her book about her mother.
It's interesting, maybe, I know two otherwomen writers who also did wonderful books
about their mothers, there is obviouslya reason for that, huh, a connection.
The thing about Simone de Beauvoir isthat she was an extremely prolific writer,
as you mentioned, she wrote quite a fewbooks that were considered to be fiction.
(05:04):
She won the Goncourt, which is theequivalent of the Booker Prize in
England or the Pulitzer Prize in theUnited States, but even maybe more
prized than that, in 1954 for a bookcalled Les Mandarins, which is really
a kind of book about her and her groupof friends, which is of course, meaning
(05:26):
she basically wrote about them anddisguised it a little bit, you know,
but that's also the way Hemingway wroteabout a few fabulous feasts in Paris
and talked about all of his friends.
But so she was known for that.
She was also of course knownfor writing many, many essays.
She was an essayist.
She was someone who started outin life wanting to be a writer.
(05:46):
That was actually, even as achild, that was what she had
announced that she wanted to do.
Simone de Beauvoir was actually bornand brought up in a very conservative,
Catholic, upper-middle class family.
And she was sent toCatholic school, as a child.
And it turns out that it wasimmediately recognized that
(06:08):
she was quite, quite brilliant.
And even as a young child, she was wayahead of everybody else in her classes.
And she originally was thinking ofgoing into mathematics of all things.
Annie (06:20):
Right, so I have been watching a lot of interviews with her, because
we have a lot of video footage,you know, it's recent enough.
And it turns out that when she wentto the university, she signed up
for 18 degrees at the same time.
Elyse (06:37):
18 degrees at the same time?
Annie (06:38):
18!
Because in France, you can sign up foras many programs as you would like.
Elyse (06:44):
But then how do you take all the classes?
Well, Well, you don't.
Oh.
Annie (06:48):
But you can go to the exams, and if you pass, you pass, okay?
And I did this, in away, but I only did two.
I did, I signed up for DEUG d'Anglais,cause I thought my English was the cat's
meow, which it wasn't, I realized thatlater, when I really learned English.
(07:08):
But and I also did DUT de communication.
So you could, when you're astudent, you've paid your fee, you
can sign up for as many things asyou want, but 18 is ridiculous.
So she wanted to learn allabout science, all about
philosophy, all about literature.
And she had an enormous capacity for work.
Elyse (07:26):
She had an enormous capacity to work and she was extremely determined.
Interestingly enough, she did actuallywind up getting degrees or almost got
the degrees in both Literature and Maths.
And then one of her professors toldher that her thinking and her way
of arguing would make her a perfectcandidate for doing Philosophy.
(07:49):
And so she wound up taking theexams to become a philosophy
teacher, a philosophy professor.
And then she did the agreg.
And that's very hard, I think, it'sextremely complicated to explain
to non-French people what theagrégation is, because it sounds like
it should be a PhD, but it's not.
Annie (08:08):
Right.
No, it's a separate thing.
It's...
you can be a doctor in a subjectmatter and not have the agrégation.
Elyse (08:15):
No, because it's about education.
Annie (08:17):
It's about education.
It's an extra exam that you take infront of a group of peers to prove
that you can teach the subject.
Elyse (08:26):
And that's the highest exam you can take in teaching beyond getting
the postdoctoral university degree.
For high school teaching,it is the highest exam.
Annie (08:36):
Right.
I had the good fortune ofhaving a professor, a philosophy
professor who had the agrégation.
And let me tell you, he was verydifferent from the other professors.
No, he wasn't History.
He was a French teacher,French literature teacher.
And he was really outstanding.
There's nothing we could throwat him that he didn't know.
He read everything, even reallymodern stuff, even comic strips.
(09:00):
He knew all the stuff.
Because I think it takes aspecial kind of mind to do that.
Anyway, agrégation is a very French thing.
And you can do agrégationin a lot of subjects.
Elyse (09:12):
And it is extremely hard, because the couple of people I know here who
have tried it including someone who'strying now for the third time, who
is very brilliant, it is extremely,extremely, extremely difficult.
Yeah.
So anyway, interestingly enough, Ihave no indication of how convincing
that person was because she didswitch, and she did indeed go
(09:32):
and take her exams in philosophy.
And it was then in 1929 that she receivedher agrégation, that she met in the
process of doing her studies at the inthe Sorbonne, that she met Jean Paul
Sartre, who I suppose we should really doa podcast about one day because he is also
(09:54):
extremely important as a thinker in Franceof the certainly middle 20th century.
And they were in the same group, a studygroup, and they became not just friends,
but they began a relationship that is theonly thing I can, the only adjective I
can use to describe it is complicated, youknow, and it lasted their entire lives.
(10:17):
And they had another, they had abig group, among whom were some
other very important intellectualsin the early and mid 20th century.
And they each got a post teachingphilosophy in a high school.
At first she was sent far away actually tothe south of France, and he was in Rouen.
And then, because they really did not wantto be separated, he actually suggested
(10:41):
that they get married and this is whereit's very interesting, because, maybe
due to her very, very strict conventionalCatholic upbringing, she wrote later
on and said it was the last thing sheever wanted to do in her entire life.
And that was something that stayedwith her for the rest of her life.
Annie (10:58):
Right, so it's very interesting because starting at the age seven, this
is one of those things that I heard in aninterview, at age seven she was playing
in the park and a very nice woman remarkedto her how pretty her calves were.
And she turned around and said, I don'tcare about my calves, I'm a person.
(11:21):
Like, my calves shouldn't matter at all.
And she had that attitude throughout herlife, where she was very like, I am a
thinking human being, not a pretty thing.
So she was a believer in Catholicismuntil about the age 14, she says, one
day she just thought, I'm believingwith no good reason, like I don't,
(11:44):
I can't think of a good reason tobelieve this or to disbelieve this.
Perhaps it doesn't matter at all.
And that was the end of that.
Elyse (11:53):
And that was the end of that.
Yes, well, I do understandthat, to be honest.
I mean, I had something similar...
Annie (11:58):
But typically young women who are very pretty, they wouldn't reject
a compliment based on their looks.
Like they would (12:06):
Oh, thank you so much, they would, you know...
if you happen to not be pretty...
Elyse (12:11):
She wasn't a great beauty though.
She was not somebody who becameattractive to other people and
to men because of her look.
She was really, it was herintellect that attracted everybody.
Annie (12:24):
Right, but she was also a fine looking person.
She was fine.
Yeah, she was a goodlooking person, like...
at any rate, I thought it wasinteresting that, from a very
young age, she rejected this...
this, like, Oh, don't you look prettyand marvellous, you know, she was like...
uh...
Elyse (12:38):
Yeah, something happened, interestingly enough, somewhere,
that very early on, she insistedthat she wanted to be recognized
for her intellectual capacities.
Annie (12:49):
Which was great.
Elyse (12:51):
Which were great, really.
I don't know, it's interesting tothink about that because, of course,
her mother did not approve of herchoices in life for a long time.
Yet it didn't bother her and she stayedclose to her mother at the same time.
Annie (13:04):
Yes, so that's really interesting as well, that she was totally, I
mean, the traditional French womanat the time was married, raised
her children, might have had a jobuntil she started having children,
and then that was the end of that.
Elyse (13:18):
We're talking, don't forget she came of age in the 20s, which is
still a time women did not vote, mostpeople did not work unless they were
relatively working class poor and theyhad to work, helping their husbands
like in a shop or something like that.
And she didn't come from thatkind of a background at all.
Annie (13:37):
No, no, her parents, I mean, they lived on, they're kind of "une rente".
So they have property, and they justhad income coming in from property,
from bank accounts, from this and that.
Yeah.
Elyse (13:51):
But so, so it's interesting to see that she just forged ahead.
I mean, she was just this kind ofa bulldozer intellectually, and
she and Sartre became the centerof this very, very important group
of intellectuals and thinkers.
Interestingly, at some point lateron, near the end of her life, she was
talking about Paris and the fact thatshe lived for a while, when she was
(14:15):
even a child, near La Rotonde in theMontparnasse area, and at the end of
her life, she had an apartment acrossfrom the cemetery of Montparnasse, which
is actually where she is buried, andshe said: 'My life is Montparnasse'.
Annie (14:29):
Right.
Her life, I mean, watching those,all those documentaries about
her life, I thought, oh, I couldwrite a VoiceMap tour based on her
because it's all in the same area.
And I don't think very many peoplewould be interested in that, so I'm
probably not going to do it, but...
Elyse (14:44):
There's not that much to see except to say, Oh, she ate here, she
slept here, you know, that kind of thing.
Annie (14:49):
Yeah, but Saint Germain des Prés also had a big, you know, I do know
for a fact that in my Saint Germaindes Prés VoiceMap, I point you to
where she and Sartre had hotel rooms.
Elyse (15:03):
Uh huh.
Annie (15:03):
Because he lived in hotels.
Elyse (15:05):
He lived in hotels.
And she basically stayednext to him, basically.
And then, of course, they hadall these friends that were the
jazz people in Saint Germain.
I mean, this was all part of thatwhole epoch in any way, you know,
Boris Vian and all those people.
So, she was really afascinating woman in that way.
And so, this is the thing, though.
In reading about her, and as I mentionedto you just a few minutes before we went
(15:26):
on broadcast, I had to read, I minoredin French literature in university.
So I had to read her.
I mean, it was an assignment.
I read The Second Sex.
And I read, which one of the booksof her memoirs, but I don't remember
actually, because there are two or threevolumes, but I just remember some of the
things that were in the books, and theyhave stayed with me all these years.
(15:47):
Because at the same time, in TheSecond Sex, she talks about things
that certainly were pertinent evento me, as a very young person.
And then at the same time in hermemoirs, she just talks about
things that are very disturbing.
And so one of the things I find about herpersonally is that I can admire her ideas
(16:09):
as a feminist, independent, intellectualwoman, but I don't admire her.
And I don't admire her becauseI think that good part of her
existence was in contradictionto what she actually wrote about.
And so that upsets me, and itbothers me, not that it makes any
difference one way or the other interms of history or anything else.
(16:31):
But she had this complex ambiguity,because at the same time, she insisted on
the independence of women, she insistedon women being intellectual beings,
she also talked about something that isvery pertinent today, and that is that
being a woman is a social construct.
(16:51):
That it is not a destiny by sex,because you're born with a female sex.
And today, a lot of young people reallywould understand that very, very well.
Whereas at the time that she was living,that was not something that people
would be willing to talk about at all.
Annie (17:08):
Yes, right.
That's right.
Yeah.
She was revolutionary in many ways.
She was ahead of her time,let's put it that way.
Because I've heard, I heard her onmany interviews say that she doesn't
think that, so she was a libertarianwhen it comes to sexual freedom.
Elyse (17:23):
Absolutely.
Annie (17:24):
Right.
So she would have said, yeah, you cansleep with whoever you want, whatever sex,
I'm sure she wouldn't have batted an eyeat more than one gender, well, whatever.
So she was really extreme in thatway, as well as her political
positions as, whenever anybody puta microphone in front of her, she
(17:46):
would tell people, women need to havetheir own jobs and their own money.
Now, this is at a time when womencould not get a job without the
permission of their husbands,could not have a bank account.
Not, you couldn't open abank account as a woman.
Elyse (18:00):
But that was true even into the 1960s.
Annie (18:03):
Yeah.
Yeah.
You couldn't vote, of course, and soshe would constantly bring this up,
like, women need to have financialindependence, because without that
there's nothing else, but she alsopushed sexual, total freedom, like...
Elyse (18:19):
But it's interesting, I don't know about the interviews because I
did not see any of them, but in fact,in her writing at first, she refuted
the idea that she was doing this.
She did not admit to it.
She did not admit to it toomuch, much later in her life.
And in fact, two of the women,what happened was, and it's hard
to know exactly how this began.
(18:41):
But of course, we're talkingabout a time up till 1968 when
women were in school with women,and men were in school with men.
This was, there was no co ed educationin France until 1960, after 1968.
And so she was a professor forwomen in good women's high schools.
And then of course she was eventually inMoliere High School, which is in Paris.
(19:01):
And that's where she stayed until shestopped being a teacher completely.
But, she started having relationshipsin the real sense of the word
with some of the students.
Now, obviously, what I find, this is whyI find it problematic, is because she
would choose the most brilliant students.
That's like a given.
And at the same time, she was someonewho at first denied it, but apparently
(19:24):
two of the women who stayed in touchwith her for a certain amount of
time, and then eventually after shedied, were still alive and so wrote
about it, said it was a fact thatthey were having sexual relationships.
It wasn't just a mentorkind of relationship.
And she didn't want to admit it.
So she spouted things that she didnot, at first wish to really admit,
probably because it would've bannedher from a good part of society.
Annie (19:48):
Well, she could have lost her job.
Elyse (19:49):
Well, she did eventually.
And she was suspended twicefor complaints about it.
Today, she would be taken in frontof a tribunal, in front of a judge,
at the time she was simply suspended.
And the second time that thathappened, that was the end of her
teaching career in public education.
Annie (20:08):
All right, but Emmanuel Macron fell in love with his
teacher much older than him.
Now, we don't know if anything washappening back then, but it's not like
it doesn't happen still to this day.
Elyse (20:20):
No, course.
I'm not saying that it doesn't happen.
It's just that she was, she wasalso sharing these young women
with Jean Paul Sartre, whichmakes it little bit different.
It really makes it a little bitdifferent because, as you say,
libertarianism was certainly in the20s and 30s extremely important.
And not political libertarian.
(20:41):
No, but sexual freedom.
Yeah, morality, if you wantto call it that, I don't know
if that's really morality.
The fact is, what bothers me, is notso much that she did that, is that
she insisted that she wasn't doing it.
Okay.
And for a long time, and that it became,if you read some, and I know that in the
quotes, I translated some of the mostfamous of her statements about women in
(21:04):
terms of feminism that come out of TheSecond Sex, because I think that they are
the most important part of her heritage.
And some of them are really incredible.
For instance, it would be verydifficult for a woman to do the same
as a man in every circumstance untiluniversal equality is recognized.
She was aware of all of these things.
(21:25):
To be a woman is not a terrible fatality,one must never assume that having ovaries
condemns a woman to a lesser status.
So she was angry on some level.
I mean, there was a certain amountof anger in all of this, and yet,
she managed to forge a life that wastotally independent and radical in
relation to this kind of behavior.
(21:47):
To be truly free, othersmust be free also.
That's a given.
Ah, okay.
I think that it's really interesting thather pronouncements and what she wrote in
The Second Sex are so vivid and so realand of course it created a huge scandal
when it was published in 1949 because itwas extremely graphic about women, and
women's bodies, and women's functions.
Annie (22:09):
Right.
So I, she also wrote another book,I can't remember the title of it.
That was very graphic about women's bits.
Elyse (22:18):
Yes.
She talks about women's sexuality.
She talks about women's bodies and that'sfunctioning, and it's to break a taboo.
It's to regularly break a taboo.
It was, the book was considered to beutterly scandalous, absolutely horrifying.
Yet she's sold 30,000 copies the firstyear of that book, and it's been reprinted
(22:41):
ever since and it's still, it still sells.
Like it's, this is one that's perennial.
It's a basic book of feminist studies.
Annie (22:50):
Yeah, it is.
Elyse (22:51):
And so in her later life, I think it became clearer, at least to other
people, that what she was trying to dowas create a foundation of what is now
considered to be feminist thinking.
And then other people joined her whowere a bit younger, a generation younger,
and it became something that was veryimportant, which is why I was given the
(23:14):
book to read, even though it was in Frenchstudies, because it was a book that was
really considered to be important interms of the end of the 20th century.
But it's interesting to me, thatit's hard to know if she wrote the
book out of anger or not, becauseI don't see any anger in her.
But at the same time, she did many things.
(23:34):
For instance, she had a, it'svery well known in terms, she
talked about it and it was writtenabout in a lot of other things.
There was an Americanwriter named Nelson Algren,
Annie (23:43):
Yeah, yeah.
Elyse (23:44):
She was doing a lecture tour in the United States.
And she met him, and they actually,they fell in love and they had this
really passionate relationship thatlasted for a couple of years, and
then the end, and I remember, nowmaybe it's because I was really young.
I mean, when I starteduniversity, I was really young.
So I'm probably read this book whenI was 19, you know, who knows what I
(24:07):
was doing at the age of 19, not much.
So at the age of 19, I'm readingthis book, and she talks about
how much she loved this man.
And it was really passionate.
And yet she gave up that relationshipbecause she had this intellectual
relationship with Sartre thatshe did not want to lose.
And of course, I'm a 19 year oldgoing, Why would you do that?
(24:30):
You know, I mean, why would yougive up this man that seems to be
the love of your life, to go andbe with this guy who, number one,
does not want to live with you?
Number two, sleeps with zillionsof women all the time, and who is
simply your intellectual partner.
You know, you can still have anintellectual partner and it doesn't
(24:50):
have to be the person that youhave a passion for, you know.
Annie (24:54):
Sartre, like you mentioned earlier, also asked her to marry him so
that they could teach in the same place.
And she said No.
Elyse (25:01):
No.
Right.
Annie (25:02):
And this Nelson, he also asked her to marry him so that she could live
with him in the US and she said No.
Elyse (25:09):
No.
She said no.
Annie (25:11):
So the best way to never see Simone de Beauvoir again
was to ask her to marry you.
Exactly.
Elyse (25:16):
Except that with Sartre, she...
except with Sartre, but which apparently,you know, if you read, especially in
her memoirs, you really understand thatbeyond a certain point, it became a
meeting of minds more than anything else,and this was something that she needed
to have in her life, no matter what.
They became partners in theirpolitical activity, particularly
(25:40):
during and after World War II.
Now, this is something very curious.
She worked for Radio Vichy.
So there's a lot of speculation andcommentary because apparently, at the
beginning anyway, Radio Vichy was notas pro-Nazi as it became later on.
And she was basicallydoing cultural programs.
(26:01):
She was basically doing thingsthat were non political.
And I don't even know if it lasted formore than just a year or so that she did
that, but of course it was brought up toher afterwards, after World War II was
over, that she actually worked for them.
But at the time she didn't consider thatto be any problem whatsoever, you know.
Annie (26:19):
Their relationship with the Second World War was complicated because,
I think you could classify them asresistant in their heads, but they never
did anything about it, not a thing.
Which puts them right in line with mostFrench people, if you think about it.
Most French people never did anything.
A few entered the Resistance.
(26:40):
I mean, perhaps, I don't know, 5percent of the population maybe at most.
Don't quote me on that, I'm just guessing.
But, you know, they didn'tdo anything about it.
And her excuse was, well, we're notpolitical, you know, but then later they
became very, very, very, very political,to absurdity, as a matter of fact.
(27:00):
That's the reason why I think,I mentioned to you earlier that
with Simone Weil, there's no partof her life that I don't admire.
All of it.
Whereas Simone de Beauvoir, I admiresome of her writing, and her activities,
and what she promoted, but there'sa lot of it where I'm like, eww.
(27:23):
Yeah.
Yeah, I agree with you.
We don't always agree on which partswe go eww about, but it true, she is
not the most, she was a relativelycomplicated person in that sense, yes.
You're absolutely right.
And it is interesting to think that,now Sartre, for those of you out
there who really have no idea, Sartreis in a way, even more complicated
(27:43):
because he was a philosopher.
He wasn't just a philosophy teacher.
He was actually a philosopher.
I would say she was a writer.
She was basically a writer.
He was a philosopher.
And he was the inventor, if you wantto call it that, of existentialism.
Which some people have called verynihilistic, and other people have simply
said is more of a way of dealing with thereality of being a human being, making
(28:09):
moral choices without it being connectedin any way to religion, which is kind of
the way I see existentialism, you know?
Elyse (28:15):
But, it influenced a huge, two generations of writers and
two generations of thinkers.
And at first they, it was AlbertCamus who was very influenced by it.
And then he went off to sortof do his own thing, which is a
lot more humanistic in approach.
But he is really famous for beingthe originator, or maybe he's the
one who coined the term, I don'treally know, but the whole circle of
(28:38):
people who surrounded them were that.
And to me, I'm not sure I completelyunderstand it, but existentialism
should involve engagement inthings, and is not apolitical.
And so it's strange thatduring World War II they were
really pretty much apolitical.
Annie (28:54):
Yeah, I think they were very scared of what was happening and they
didn't want, they were afraid of whatmight happen if they opened their mouths.
They were still very young, notas famous as they became later.
And they had just enough fameto be noticed, but not so much
(29:15):
that they were out of reach.
Like, you know, when you getto a certain level of fame...
Elyse (29:20):
You think you're untouchable?
Annie (29:21):
Yeah, you might be untouchable.
You might be like Stephen King.
Stephen King constantly talkssmack about Donald Trump.
It's not going to hurt him.
Elyse (29:30):
No, but nobody cares, I mean, he's not a politician.
Annie (29:34):
Right, but he's untouchable in that sense, you know, it
won't make any difference.
Elyse (29:38):
Right.
Annie (29:39):
But if you're somebody much, much smaller, that has some fame but not so
much, you might be careful what you say.
Elyse (29:45):
But what's interesting then is that we come out of World War II and it is in
1949 that she publishes The Second Sex.
If I'm not mistaken, it wasin '46 that women were able
to vote for the first time.
So this is just post World War II.
And it is in '49 after having writtenquite a few books that she publishes
and makes a huge success, andbecomes notorious for The Second Sex.
(30:09):
And I think that isreally her seminal work.
I mean, her writing that is fiction isone thing, her essays are interesting, but
really, if you think about it, The SecondSex is groundbreaking in terms of talking
about women, and talking about theirequality, talking about their bodies.
The other person it makes me think ofwhose work I also read enormously at
(30:31):
a certain point in my life is DorisLessing, who of course won a Nobel Prize
in Literature and who's originally fromRhodesia, Zimbabwe, and then who went on
to live the rest of her life in England.
But she made no bones about thefact that she was writing as a
feminist, but she was writing fiction.
Whereas, I think, Simone de Beauvoirwas writing philosophical tracts that
(30:54):
she wanted people to pay attention to.
What is interesting is that ifyou quote some of the things from
her writing, it's aggressive.
It's not untrue, it's just that it's,there's a certain aggressivity in
it, but she herself seems to not havehad that anger in her as a person.
Annie (31:12):
Well, she laid it out in ways.
There's a quote of hers that I saw: 'Never forget that a political, (31:14):
undefined
economic, or religious crisis will beenough to challenge women's rights.
These rights are never vested.
You must remain vigilant your whole life.
Elyse (31:31):
And that, you can say is what's going on in some
parts of the world right now.
Annie (31:35):
Yeah, yeah, you can say that.
Elyse (31:37):
As soon as there's any kind of political crisis, economic crisis, the
first people who pay the price are women.
And that's where she was absolutely right.
And so she is really one of the foundingwomen of the very, very important group
of people who come after her, both in thearts, and in writing, and in politics.
(32:00):
If there hadn't been a Simonede Beauvoir, there would not be
other people, even people like...
Annie (32:08):
Christine Lagarde is the one you want.
Elyse (32:09):
That's the one I want.
So, I mean, all of these people who haveforged ahead and have taken on roles
that in the past were really exclusivelyfor men, they all owe a huge thanks
to Simone de Beauvoir, even if shebasically was a theoretician, she is
really one of the two or three peoplewho created the structure for all of
(32:31):
this to happen in the last 50, 60 years.
Annie (32:36):
So let's talk a little bit about things that happened
towards more the end of her life.
So this Nelson Algren was acommunist thinker as well, as far
as an American can be a communist.
So that probably influenced hersome, but later in her life,
she was a dedicated communist.
Like she really believed...
Elyse (32:57):
But she never joined the party.
Annie (32:58):
No, she didn't join the party, but that's all she ever not do.
She was invited by Russian, Chinese, Cuba,to be, you know, on official visits and
they would parade her and Sartre saying,see, these great French intellectuals are
with us and isn't that grand, whatever.
(33:20):
And they really promoted the ideaof communism in France, saying that
it was, that's how the world shouldbe run and totally ignored the
horrible things that were happening.
If they had inquired even alittle bit, they would have known.
(33:41):
I mean, Mao Zedong killed a lot of people.
Elyse (33:44):
Stalin, Stalin killed a lot of people.
I don't even think a lot is thecorrect word, I mean, the millions,
and millions, and millions.
Now, my understanding is, particularlyin France, but not only, that there was
a whole group of intellectuals, justimmediately post World War II, who became
what these were, that is what Simone deBeauvoir and Jean Paul Sartre were, which
(34:09):
is simply what is called fellow travelers.
That is, they were highly sympathetic toall communist causes, but they did not
actually belong to the Communist Party.
And because they were relativecelebrities, intellectual celebrities,
but there were also others who wereentertainment celebrities, they were
(34:30):
invited to these countries like Chinaand to Stalinistic Soviet Union, to
be shown off, and of course becamebasically the puppets by doing so.
Now, in the case of some people,they realized what was happening, and
that is the case of, for instance,Yves Montand and Simone Segnoret.
It took them a number of years, butthey eventually came out and spoke, and
(34:53):
admitted to having been used, and thenchanged, publicly changed their ideas.
But I don't know thatSimone de Beauvoir ever did.
Annie (35:01):
She did not.
So she had written a book called 'TheLong March', or 'The Longest March'
or something like that, that wasall in praise of what Mao was doing.
And she later said, okay, this was,I made a mistake, but she never
said that Mao was wrong, or wasa murderer, or any of that thing.
(35:26):
She just said, oh, my book went a littletoo far, you know, whereas Camus, for
instance, he just, he said, no, that isjust, we cannot treat people that way.
You know, because he was more of ahumanist and he cared more about the
fate of people, whereas Simone deBeauvoir and Jean Paul Sartre were
more, you know, the ideas of communismmade sense to them, and so it didn't
(35:49):
matter what it did in reality.
They just wanted a perfect politicalsystem, which of course it is not.
But they saw it that way.
And so they were reallycomplicated, I think.
And it's hard to not justgo, how can smart people like
them be taken in that way.
Elyse (36:09):
Sweetheart, you know, smart people are taken in by lots of things.
I mean, it isn't just communism.
I think that there was a time, Ithink, from what I understand, with
a certain number of these people,now, as you mentioned, I mean,
Simone de Beauvoir was a brain.
I mean, basically, you know, whateverelse you can say about her, she was a
brain, you know, and so was, so JeanPaul Sartre, I think that it was, as you
(36:34):
mentioned, it's the idea, the idealizationof something that somehow clouds the view
so that you don't see the reality of it.
Some people saw a realitysooner than later.
Others never gave up that idea.
I think that unfortunatelythat does happen.
And I think that probably theywere certainly not the only ones.
(36:55):
It's just that the more somebody is famousin public, the more it has an effect and
a kind of snowball effect, because theseare people who do influence other people
and influence other people's thinking.
You also wind up having a lot ofrecrimination afterwards because
why did you take that petition?
Why did you not speak outagainst this and that?
I don't know, maybe it's just my gettingolder is making me more, I don't know
(37:19):
what the word is, it's like peopleget duped all the time, you know?
Yeah, we do.
We do.
You know, we do.
And I think that the problem was thatcoming out of World War II and the
devastation of fascism, and the Nazis,and seeing what happened in France and
they both were children during WorldWar I, I think that you look for an
ideal and there's a point at whicheven when you have that kind of
(37:42):
a great intellect, you try not tosee the bad sides of it somehow.
I mean, that's hard.
Annie (37:47):
Yeah, they were in an intellectual bubble that didn't let them see kind
of broadly enough what was happening.
Elyse (37:55):
And so of course, there was a lot of falling out among all these,
but there was a massive group ofintellectuals who developed in France
who did a lot to influence generalintellectual thinking post World War II.
They were the group that were the mostinfluential everywhere in Western world.
And it was the French.
It really was.
And so, the artists and the writers,this was coming out of World War II.
(38:19):
They were the ones that were tryingto postulate new ways of thinking,
new ways of being, I don't know.
Annie (38:25):
They weren't perfect human beings, but they had interesting ideas.
And the other thing that happenedtowards the end of her life is
that she was dead set against thecolonization of any sort, which France
didn't have as many colonies as, say,the English did, but we had plenty.
And French people didn't exitout of their colonies as semi
(38:48):
gracefully as the English did.
Like, the war in Algeria was terribleand she was dead set against it.
Elyse (38:55):
She signed, she was one of the signers of the petition about the
liberation, about independence forAlgeria, but also she was one of the
founders of the movement to help womenwho had been tortured during the war in
Algeria, specifically focusing on women asvictims of the war, because a lot of women
(39:15):
who fought on the side of the Algerians,there weren't that many women that fought
on the side of the French, but on the sideof the Algerians were taken and tortured.
And so she was one of the group of womenwho created this petition to free these
women and to not have them convicted asbeing traitors or something like that.
And then she, again, signed the petitionlater, if I'm not mistaken, it was in
(39:38):
19, what, 1970 something, the petitionabout abortion, the famous petition
of the 343, many of whom are famouswomen who signed a petition saying
that they had had, at least once intheir life, an abortion and that was
the moment to have the law passed.
Annie (39:59):
Right, and we did another episode about Simone Weil and where
we talked extensively about abortionand what her thinking was about that.
Because Simone Weil was very, wasa traditional kind of person as far
as her personal life was concerned.
She married, she had three boys,as far as I know, no affairs,
whatever, you know, she was just atraditional run of the mill woman.
(40:24):
And I think in many ways, in my opinionanyway, the feminist views held by
these traditional women hit harderthan the ones by very free women.
Because you can always say,oh, look, she's just...
Elyse (40:41):
A crazy bohemian.
Annie (40:42):
Yeah, yes.
And that's why she has those thoughts.
Whereas with Simone Weil, you know, shewas very traditional, but she still said,
you know, we have to have women have thefreedom to make decisions about their
own bodies, and their own bank accounts,and their own voting and all of that.
And these concepts are being challengedin some countries and, it's really
(41:07):
never, the fight is never won.
Elyse (41:10):
No, not unless it's made into constitutional law,
which it has been in France.
It has been.
And interestingly enough, so themanifesto of the 343 was in fact,
of course, in 1971, which was justbefore when it went into places a law.
And then in 1977, so in 1977,just about 70, she's 69 years old,
(41:32):
she became editor-in-chief of amagazine called Radical Feminists.
And this is the activity thatshe continued actually up until
her death, at the age of 78.
She went back.
Jean Paul Sartre died in 1980.
He was just a couple ofyears older than her.
So the last few years of her life,I don't know if she gave many public
(41:53):
interviews, but she just went back toher writing, doing her feminist writing.
And I would assume that by then,certainly by the 1980s, she realized the
influence that she had had, both by thewriting of The Second Sex, more than her
fiction, because she did win the Goncourtin 1954, which was five years later.
(42:17):
But I think the books that influencedthe world the most and has made her
stay in history the most are thebooks that she has written about
the feminine condition, you know.
Annie (42:25):
Right.
And she never had any children, whichis another thing that she was very,
it was shocking back then to hearthat a woman didn't want to marry,
didn't want to have any children.
That was like, people couldn'tunderstand that, especially
men couldn't understand that.
And she just thought all ofthese barriers need to be broken.
(42:49):
Now, I don't think she ever said to womenwho were married and were having children,
you made the wrong choice, but she wantedthings to be, she wanted it to be possible
for a young woman to choose whether shewanted to marry and have children or not.
Elyse (43:07):
And you know, that is still interestingly, maybe less so in the
immediate young generation rightnow, but there is a carryover of that
because you sometimes have people say,Oh, how come you don't have children?
You know, there's this assumption that,Oh, there must be something wrong.
It couldn't be simply a choice.
(43:29):
I mean, for some people it is achoice, for some people it's not,
unfortunately, it is just whathappens, but we don't say that to men.
Annie (43:36):
Exactly.
That's the thing.
We never ask a man do you have children,and if he says no, you don't go, oh,
poor dear, what's wrong with you?
Yeah.
Elyse (43:46):
Yeah.
Annie (43:46):
Are you a violently feminist person, or are you just broken?
Elyse (43:53):
Right, right, no.
Annie (43:55):
Why do we do it to women?
Elyse (43:57):
Well, there you are.
I mean, this is your...
so she was extremely importantfor all of these things.
And I think that at the sametime, it's just inevitable.
The book that she wrote in1949, which is now what?
It's 50, 60, 70, 75 years old.
It's probably, if I reread it now, itwould have some things that I would
find very outdated, you know, but at thesame time, it was a breakthrough book.
(44:22):
And the fact that she talked aboutwomen, both in terms of their physical
desire and in their intellectualindependence, was just something
that had not been done before.
There were little bits of that, you know,you get the suffragettes in England,
you get people at the end of the 19thcentury who are, even Madame Curie, I
mean, people who have great intellectualpower, but they were married and had
(44:44):
children at the same time, you know, theidea of making this an absolute case of
liberty was just something totally new.
And that is really Simone de Beauvoir.
Annie (44:54):
Yeah, she was, I think she's an interesting person.
I really enjoyed reading the book aboutthe end of the life of her mother.
I thought that was very profound.
I would recommend that one.
Would you recommend other books by her?
I mean, is it worth, isshe worth reading today?
Elyse (45:12):
I think the memoirs are actually really interesting, but I think
that if you haven't done studies onabout, if you don't know any of these
people, it might not mean that muchbecause she mentions all of these
intellectuals of the 30s, 40s, 50s, and60s, some of whom are not even alive
anymore, but they were the powerhouse.
(45:34):
This was, I mean, France wasthe intellectual powerhouse mid
20th century in general anyway.
I found it interesting, even thoughI had no idea who some of these
people were, because she talksabout her place in all of this.
So, I don't know, I would be interestedmaybe in re reading some of those
texts again, to see how interestingI find them now, but I think mostly
(45:56):
they're interesting to see how shepositions herself as a woman in
the midst of all of this, becauseit was pretty male heavy, anyway.
Annie (46:04):
Yeah, and they might be in the public domain by now.
Elyse (46:07):
I think they are.
Annie (46:08):
Yeah, I wonder if I could find a, like a...
somebody who read The Second Sex.
Elyse (46:15):
Recently?
Annie (46:16):
Yeah.
I mean, not on Audible.
It's not on Audible, well, it is onAudible, but I would have to use a credit.
And I was like, ah, andit's a really long book.
I was like, I don't reallywant to listen to all of that.
Elyse (46:27):
Can't believe that I actually read it all.
Annie (46:29):
Maybe you didn't...
Elyse (46:30):
I'm pretty sure I did.
Maybe you read the Cliff's Notes.
Ah, no, no, no.
I did read the Cliff's Notes for a coupleof the literature pieces that we had to
read in class because I just couldn'twade my way through it, you know, but...
Yeah, well, the professors I hadthen are probably all gone and in
heaven right now, so it wouldn'tmake any difference, you know.
But no, I did read the book, and I,it left a lasting impression on me.
(46:53):
It really did.
Annie (46:54):
And also the fact that it was such a controversial like, shocking book, I
think would make people want to read it.
I mean, a person like you, I thinkyou'd want to read it, because
it's, like a shocking book.
Elyse (47:08):
Well, especially, I mean, I grew up in a, you know, really
relatively nice, conventional middle,lower middle class family, you know.
I mean, I was supposed to growup to be the good little girl
and be well behaved and do allof that kind of stuff, you know.
Yeah, I mean you were for the most part.
Well, I was until I got intoart school and got the when
(47:28):
hell broke loose, you know.
Annie (47:30):
One of one of these days we're going to have to do an
episode that's called When AllHell Broke Loose with Elyse.
Elyse (47:38):
I think that maybe there are excerpts that stay in my mind after all
these years, just because I was froma relatively sheltered background and
it was like, Oh, you know, I mean, youread these things, you go, Oh, you know,
I don't think that young people todaywould have the same reaction, you know.
Annie (47:55):
Maybe not.
Elyse (47:56):
It's a totally different world.
Annie (47:57):
Maybe not.
But all these things that shewrote about the female bits,
like, it's like nobody cared.
Like nobody wanted to see it ortalk about it, or explore it or,
like, it was like, mm mm we...
Elyse (48:11):
Well, okay, now, there is a thing though, that for instance, you
have writers, now, I may be wrongabout the chronology, but you have
a writer like Anaïs Nin, who wasinvolved with the writer Henry Miller.
These were people who wrote things thatwere fiction, and it was scandalous,
and in fact, in some cases, itwas actually banned or censored.
(48:33):
But it was considered to befiction, it was sold as fiction.
Whereas the differences that Simone deBeauvoir was writing not fiction, because
basically you can get away with a lot ofstuff if you call it fiction, you know?
Sure.
Whereas what she was doing was documentingwhat it was like to be a woman.
And I have to say that thosepieces did not shock me so much as
(48:56):
they were really a revelation toread a woman talking about them.
She also wrote something that hasstayed with me all these years, and
it's actually, unfortunately, even morepertinent now than it was before, and
that is, she said, as you get older,your body gets older, but you stay the
same young spirit that you always are.
(49:19):
You know, you just are,you are just you, you know.
As such, there are lots of thingslike that in the book that are
really, really interesting to read.
I don't remember, to be honest,if she talks about some of the
intrigues in her personal life.
That's something else.
I think she talked moreabout the female condition.
A woman in the United States who followedgeneration later is Germaine Greer,
(49:41):
who I think is actually still alive.
She must be quite old now.
But who, who basically followed witha book about the female condition, but
was much more conciliatory towards men.
Annie (49:52):
And so, to end on a happy note, let's say that if you want
to follow in Simone de Beauvoirfootsteps, go visit Montparnasse.
Go to the cemetery at Montparnasse.
She and Sartre are together, and they'renot at Père Lachaise but at Montparnasse.
Montparnasse has a lot ofinteresting graves and people
(50:16):
are buried there as well.
And also La Rotonde is a lovelyrestaurant, I really like it.
And also go to Saint Germain desPrés because that's where a lot
of these people hung out, andlived a part of their life anyway.
Elyse (50:32):
Yes, and you can sort of feel the ghosts of Simone de Beauvoir,
Jean Paul Sartre, maybe Boris Vianand all these people hanging out
in the cafes right around there.
They're there in spirit all the time.
Annie (50:46):
Thank you so much, Elyse.
You're welcome Annie.
Au revoir.
Again, I want to thank my patrons forgiving back and supporting the show.
Patreon supporters get new episodesas soon as they are ready and ad-free.
If that sounds good to you, please be likethem, follow the link in the show notes.
(51:09):
And patrons get many exclusive rewardsfor doing that, you can see all
the details at patreon.com/joinus.
And a special shout out this week toour new Join Us in France champions,
Verity Dimock, who is a new yearlypatron from Canada, Pam from Australia,
(51:35):
Arthur Siegel, Ashley Senfield, MarthaMeyer, Karen Dunn, Diane Goldman,
Ellen Pearson, Virginie Robertson,Timothy Dyess, Azura Sanchez, and J.
R.
Hill.
Karen wrote (51:53):
'I've been listening to your podcast for about six months.
It has been extremelyhelpful and entertaining.
Thank you so much forvaluable information.
Thank you for those kind words, Karen.
And thank you, Teresa Perdue,Ted Nunn, and Chris Larson for
renewing your yearly membership.
(52:13):
Thank you, Heather Saint Jacques,Stephen Struck, and Alexis Butler
for editing your pledge up.
And to all my current patrons, it'swonderful to have you on board in the
community of travel enthusiasts andFrancophiles who keep this podcast going.
And to support Elyse, of course,you've heard today how wonderful
(52:34):
she is, go to patreon.com/ElysArt.
My thanks also to an anonymous donor whosent in a generous one time donation using
any green button on joinusinfrance.comthat says 'Tip your guide'.
That person wrote (52:52):
'Annie, thank you for your amazing work.
I prefer to remain anonymous.
Happy Holidays', thank you, and HappyNew Year to you as well, anonymous donor.
I want to share an email exchangeI had with Brenda Johnson soon
after she became a patron.
I edited what she wrote for brevity.
Bonjour Annie, I counted up andI have visited France 16 times.
(53:16):
My first trip to Europe was in 1980.
My college organized five weektrips and I went on the trip
with our art history professor.
My most recent trip to France was inthe Fall of 2022 when we flew in and
out of Geneva and spent two weeksin the Haute Savoie and the Jura.
In between were many independenttrips to explore all over France.
(53:40):
I would buy the Michelin green guidefor the area we were planning to visit
and my vacation would start in my headas soon as I started the itinerary.
I had hoped to travel more when Iquit working but my mom had a serious
series of health setbacks and liveswith me for increasing amounts of time.
She died three months ago.
(54:00):
I'm sorry to hear that.
And I was so blessed by the time wewere together, including one trip
years ago to Switzerland and Paris.
So for the last year, I have so enjoyedlistening to your podcast and remembering
my experiences in places you talkabout and planning for future visits.
Thank you very much, Brenda.
It's heartwarming to readtestimonials like this.
(54:23):
I know that the Join Us in France travelpodcast is not going to cure cancer, okay?
But it does provide entertainment,comfort, and company to
people who love France.
And there's absolutelynothing wrong with that.
I hope you get to come back at some point.
Somebody left a lovely review ofmy food tour in Les Halles, a very
(54:43):
informative and entertaining tour.
I have stayed in Rue Montorgueilneighborhood during several past visits
in Paris, but still learned a lot eventhough I'm familiar with the area.
I especially appreciate thehistorical perspective of the region
and insights into the restaurantsand shop, trusted repeat customer.
(55:04):
This is a fantastic neighborhoodfor all gourmands to explore.
All of Annie Sargent's VoiceMap walkingtours are excellent, she shares her
knowledge and love of Paris in thewarmest and most engaging manner.
Well, thank you very much.
About my Montmartre tour, truly excellent,this tour had so many great stories of
the area, I feel lucky to have foundit, highly recommended, thank you.
(55:27):
And about my Saint-Germain-des-Préstour, fantastic tour, easy to follow,
took me places I would not have venturedwithout it, and great stories to go along.
Another thing about my tours isthat I update them when necessary.
I'll be on my way to Paris next week,actually, or the week after that, I
can't remember, anyway, soon to changemy Île de la Cité tour, which includes
(55:50):
Notre Dame, because things have changeda lot around there, haven't they?
I mean, it's a beautiful,beautiful change.
And remember that podcast listenersget a big discount for buying
these tours from my website.
And if you buy directly from me, rememberit's a manual process, I'm not a robot, so
give me a few hours to send you the codes.
(56:11):
If you need them immediately, get themfrom the VoiceMap app directly, and then
that's a direct download immediately.
If you want to read more reviews of thesetours, go to joinusinfrance.com/VMR.
That stands for VoiceMap Reviews.
And if you're thinking about a trip toFrance this year and have a hard time
deciding what to do, I can help you withmy one on one consultations on Zoom.
(56:34):
For most podcast listeners, theBonjour service is all you need.
We talk for an hour and Ihelp you make some choices.
Okay?
Because a lot of people, they're notsure how long to spend, do it this way
or that way, I can cut to the chasefor you because I've done these things.
I know that people who listento the podcast have a lot of
(56:54):
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But if you need more in depth and youwant a day by day itinerary and all of
that, you can sign up for a VIP service.
And you can see all of the details andbook that at joinusinfrance.com/boutique.
All right, let's talk about newholiday rental regulations in France.
(57:17):
This is what you need to know.
The French government is tighteningrules on short term holiday rentals
effective January 1st, 2025.
The new law aims to address thehousing shortage that affects locals
especially in populartourist destinations.
Here's what changes to expect.
(57:38):
Number one, mandatory registration.
Any property rented out, evenoccasionally, must be registered
with local authorities and havea unique registration number.
False declarations could resultin fines up to 20,000 Euros.
So that's serious, and I'm sure alot of people who thought they could
(57:58):
get away with not registering are nowgoing to think, ah, maybe I should.
Number two, change of use authorization,renting out second homes or properties
as furnished holiday accommodationsrequire a format change of use.
Failure to comply may leadto a 10,000 Euro fine.
So again, this is aregistration type of deal.
(58:22):
Number three, energy efficiency rules.
Newly registered rentals must meetstricter energy performance ratings.
Existing rentals have up to 10 yearsto comply with these requirements.
This is affecting all rentals, whetherthey are long term or short term.
And if you ask me, it's a good thing.
We need to do better withenergy efficiency in our homes.
(58:45):
Number four, tax reforms.
Tax allowances for furnished touristrentals will decrease, aligning more
closely with residential rental rates.
And classified tourist accommodationswill see allowances drop to 30 percent
of annual revenue under 15,000 Euros.
So, this is because, so far, it wasmore advantageous to rent a property,
(59:11):
an apartment, as a short term rentalthan to rent it for a long term rental.
And so they are reversingthat and they are now making
those two things more aligned.
And that means that some people will stopdoing short term rentals for tourism.
Number five, rental capsfor primary residences.
(59:33):
The annual limit for renting outprimary residences as holiday rentals
is reduced from 120 to 90 days.
Okay, so, really, it has to be occasionaland not, because 120 days is quite a lot.
Number six, local authority powers, localgovernments can impose stricter rules.
(59:56):
And by local governments, we mean cities.
Including rental bans in specificareas, such as Montmartre and the Marais
in Paris, because there it is out ofcontrol, people cannot find a place to
live, because just about every propertythere is just for short term rentals.
And that has to stop.
(01:00:17):
I'm all for travel, but come on.
So the law also affects second homeowners who must now declare rental
income to French tax authorities,even if they reside abroad.
So there might be some of youlistening who own property
in France and rent it out.
Well, it affects you as well.
Airbnb responded by saying that thesechanges could harm families relying
(01:00:41):
on rental income, while some localsapplaud the measures as essential
to protecting community housing.
And for that, yes, it's, I mean,that's a political question.
Personally, I think that it's okayto rent your home so long as you're
willing to play by the rules.
And it's fine to impose somerules on property owners.
(01:01:04):
I think you should consider thesenew regulations if planning to
rent property in France, eitheras an owner or as a renter.
I agree that rentals make sense for folkswho travel with children and families.
They also make sense for folks whowant to cook most of their own meals.
And I wanted you to be prepared forchanges, possibly price increases as
(01:01:27):
owners pass the cost of renovationsand regulations onto the renters.
My thanks to podcast editors,Anne and Christian Cotovan,
who produced the transcripts.
Next podcast, an episode withKatherine Butler about how to
enjoy a romantic vacation in Paris.
And remember, Patrons get anad-free version of this episode,
(01:01:50):
click in the link in the show notesof this episode to be like them.
Thank you for listening.
And I hope you join me next time sowe can look around France together.
Au revoir.
The Join Us in France travelpodcast is written, hosted, and
produced by Annie Sargent, andCopyright 2025 by AddictedToFrance.
(01:02:11):
It is released under a CreativeCommons attribution, non-commercial,
no derivatives license.
This is Join Us in France, episode 528, cinq cent vingt-huit.
Bonjour, I'm Annie Sargent, and Join Usin France is the podcast where we take
a conversational journey through thebeauty, culture, and flavors of France.
Today, I bring you a conversationwith Elyse Rivin of Toulouse Guided
Walks about Simone de Beauvoir.
(00:39):
Discover the fascinating life ofthis pioneering feminist, writer, and
intellectual who challenged societalnorms and left an indelible mark
on women's rights and philosophy.
She's been turned into a bit ofa boogeyman by some, but you'll
see that she made a lot of sense.
This podcast is supported by donorsand listeners who buy my tours and
(01:00):
services, including my ItineraryConsult Service, my GPS self-guided
tours of Paris on the VoiceMap app,or take a day trip with me around the
southwest of France in my electric car.
You can browse all of that at myboutique: joinusinfrance.com/boutique.
Patreon supporters get new episodesas soon as they are ready and ad-free.
(01:23):
If that sounds good to you, be likethem, follow the link in the show notes.
For the Magazine part of thepodcast, after my chat with Elyse
today, I'll discuss the changesto rental rules that took effect
in France, on January 1st, 2025.
They represent a significant shift thatcould affect your travel experience going
(01:43):
forward, so I thought you'd like to know.
Bonjour, Elyse.
Elyse (01:56):
Bonjour, Annie.
Annie (01:57):
We have a fantastic topic today, someone that I
didn't know that much about.
I only read one of her booksvery recently, but you had
read more of her stuff.
We're talking about Simone de Beauvoir.
Elyse (02:13):
This is in a series of extraordinary women that
we started with Simone Veil,
Annie (02:22):
so, Elyse, as always, I'm going to let you take it away because you like
to do the biography type things, andthen I will jump in to add my bit here.
Elyse (02:31):
Jump, jump, jump, jump, my froggy friend.
There you go.
Okay, so let's talk about Simone deBeauvoir, I don't know how many more
Simones we're going to have, but thereseem to be quite a few out there.
Simone de Beauvoir is really famous, I'dsay famous now, because this is a woman
who was born in 1908 and died in 1986.
(02:54):
And was extremely influential inintellectual circles, and thinking
circles, certainly in the mid20th century, and a bit less as
we get towards the end of the 20thcentury, interestingly enough.
But she is really known as being one ofthe founders of the feminist movement,
and I mean that in its largest sense,because it's, you can argue that feminism
(03:20):
is a bit different in each country, andthat it has taken certain turns, and
that the young women today do not havethe same exact definition of feminism as
perhaps was the case post World War II.
But she is definitely one of the peoplewho is a founding member of the thinking
behind feminism and certainly claimed itas a term that she herself wanted to use.
Annie (03:48):
Right.
And so she is most famousfor the book The Second Sex.
But she was also a prolific writer.
She wrote many other things, andI think she was a really good
writer, as a matter of fact.
I mean, even though I hadn't readmuch, the one that I did read,
I thought it was very well...
Elyse (04:06):
Which on did you read?
Annie (04:06):
It was the one about the death of her mother.
She wrote that late.
Elyse (04:10):
She wrote that late.
And interestingly enough, Jean PaulSartre, who is of course, extremely
important in her life and is anintellectual, very important in
France, said that it was her bestpiece of writing, interestingly enough.
Annie (04:23):
I am not surprised.
It was, in English it's called 'A VeryEasy Death', and it's a very good book,
like you can really relate to whatshe's talking about, seeing her mother
get old and get very sick and die.
Elyse (04:40):
Just like Annie Arnaud, the Nobel Prize winner, when we
read her book about her mother.
It's interesting, maybe, I know two otherwomen writers who also did wonderful books
about their mothers, there is obviouslya reason for that, huh, a connection.
The thing about Simone de Beauvoir isthat she was an extremely prolific writer,
as you mentioned, she wrote quite a fewbooks that were considered to be fiction.
(05:04):
She won the Goncourt, which is theequivalent of the Booker Prize in
England or the Pulitzer Prize in theUnited States, but even maybe more
prized than that, in 1954 for a bookcalled Les Mandarins, which is really
a kind of book about her and her groupof friends, which is of course, meaning
(05:26):
she basically wrote about them anddisguised it a little bit, you know,
but that's also the way Hemingway wroteabout a few fabulous feasts in Paris
and talked about all of his friends.
But so she was known for that.
She was also of course knownfor writing many, many essays.
She was an essayist.
She was someone who started outin life wanting to be a writer.
(05:46):
That was actually, even as achild, that was what she had
announced that she wanted to do.
Simone de Beauvoir was actually bornand brought up in a very conservative,
Catholic, upper-middle class family.
And she was sent toCatholic school, as a child.
And it turns out that it wasimmediately recognized that
(06:08):
she was quite, quite brilliant.
And even as a young child, she was wayahead of everybody else in her classes.
And she originally was thinking ofgoing into mathematics of all things.
Annie (06:20):
Right, so I have been watching a lot of interviews with her, because
we have a lot of video footage,you know, it's recent enough.
And it turns out that when she wentto the university, she signed up
for 18 degrees at the same time.
Elyse (06:37):
18 degrees at the same time?
Annie (06:38):
18!
Because in France, you can sign up foras many programs as you would like.
Elyse (06:44):
But then how do you take all the classes?
Well, Well, you don't.
Oh.
Annie (06:48):
But you can go to the exams, and if you pass, you pass, okay?
And I did this, in away, but I only did two.
I did, I signed up for DEUG d'Anglais,cause I thought my English was the cat's
meow, which it wasn't, I realized thatlater, when I really learned English.
(07:08):
But and I also did DUT de communication.
So you could, when you're astudent, you've paid your fee, you
can sign up for as many things asyou want, but 18 is ridiculous.
So she wanted to learn allabout science, all about
philosophy, all about literature.
And she had an enormous capacity for work.
Elyse (07:26):
She had an enormous capacity to work and she was extremely determined.
Interestingly enough, she did actuallywind up getting degrees or almost got
the degrees in both Literature and Maths.
And then one of her professors toldher that her thinking and her way
of arguing would make her a perfectcandidate for doing Philosophy.
(07:49):
And so she wound up taking theexams to become a philosophy
teacher, a philosophy professor.
And then she did the agreg.
And that's very hard, I think, it'sextremely complicated to explain
to non-French people what theagrégation is, because it sounds like
it should be a PhD, but it's not.
Annie (08:08):
Right.
No, it's a separate thing.
It's...
you can be a doctor in a subjectmatter and not have the agrégation.
Elyse (08:15):
No, because it's about education.
Annie (08:17):
It's about education.
It's an extra exam that you take infront of a group of peers to prove
that you can teach the subject.
Elyse (08:26):
And that's the highest exam you can take in teaching beyond getting
the postdoctoral university degree.
For high school teaching,it is the highest exam.
Annie (08:36):
Right.
I had the good fortune ofhaving a professor, a philosophy
professor who had the agrégation.
And let me tell you, he was verydifferent from the other professors.
No, he wasn't History.
He was a French teacher,French literature teacher.
And he was really outstanding.
There's nothing we could throwat him that he didn't know.
He read everything, even reallymodern stuff, even comic strips.
(09:00):
He knew all the stuff.
Because I think it takes aspecial kind of mind to do that.
Anyway, agrégation is a very French thing.
And you can do agrégationin a lot of subjects.
Elyse (09:12):
And it is extremely hard, because the couple of people I know here who
have tried it including someone who'strying now for the third time, who
is very brilliant, it is extremely,extremely, extremely difficult.
Yeah.
So anyway, interestingly enough, Ihave no indication of how convincing
that person was because she didswitch, and she did indeed go
(09:32):
and take her exams in philosophy.
And it was then in 1929 that she receivedher agrégation, that she met in the
process of doing her studies at the inthe Sorbonne, that she met Jean Paul
Sartre, who I suppose we should really doa podcast about one day because he is also
(09:54):
extremely important as a thinker in Franceof the certainly middle 20th century.
And they were in the same group, a studygroup, and they became not just friends,
but they began a relationship that is theonly thing I can, the only adjective I
can use to describe it is complicated, youknow, and it lasted their entire lives.
(10:17):
And they had another, they had abig group, among whom were some
other very important intellectualsin the early and mid 20th century.
And they each got a post teachingphilosophy in a high school.
At first she was sent far away actually tothe south of France, and he was in Rouen.
And then, because they really did not wantto be separated, he actually suggested
(10:41):
that they get married and this is whereit's very interesting, because, maybe
due to her very, very strict conventionalCatholic upbringing, she wrote later
on and said it was the last thing sheever wanted to do in her entire life.
And that was something that stayedwith her for the rest of her life.
Annie (10:58):
Right, so it's very interesting because starting at the age seven, this
is one of those things that I heard in aninterview, at age seven she was playing
in the park and a very nice woman remarkedto her how pretty her calves were.
And she turned around and said, I don'tcare about my calves, I'm a person.
(11:21):
Like, my calves shouldn't matter at all.
And she had that attitude throughout herlife, where she was very like, I am a
thinking human being, not a pretty thing.
So she was a believer in Catholicismuntil about the age 14, she says, one
day she just thought, I'm believingwith no good reason, like I don't,
(11:44):
I can't think of a good reason tobelieve this or to disbelieve this.
Perhaps it doesn't matter at all.
And that was the end of that.
Elyse (11:53):
And that was the end of that.
Yes, well, I do understandthat, to be honest.
I mean, I had something similar...
Annie (11:58):
But typically young women who are very pretty, they wouldn't reject
a compliment based on their looks.
Like they would (12:06):
Oh, thank you so much, they would, you know...
if you happen to not be pretty...
Elyse (12:11):
She wasn't a great beauty though.
She was not somebody who becameattractive to other people and
to men because of her look.
She was really, it was herintellect that attracted everybody.
Annie (12:24):
Right, but she was also a fine looking person.
She was fine.
Yeah, she was a goodlooking person, like...
at any rate, I thought it wasinteresting that, from a very
young age, she rejected this...
this, like, Oh, don't you look prettyand marvellous, you know, she was like...
uh...
Elyse (12:38):
Yeah, something happened, interestingly enough, somewhere,
that very early on, she insistedthat she wanted to be recognized
for her intellectual capacities.
Annie (12:49):
Which was great.
Elyse (12:51):
Which were great, really.
I don't know, it's interesting tothink about that because, of course,
her mother did not approve of herchoices in life for a long time.
Yet it didn't bother her and she stayedclose to her mother at the same time.
Annie (13:04):
Yes, so that's really interesting as well, that she was totally, I
mean, the traditional French womanat the time was married, raised
her children, might have had a jobuntil she started having children,
and then that was the end of that.
Elyse (13:18):
We're talking, don't forget she came of age in the 20s, which is
still a time women did not vote, mostpeople did not work unless they were
relatively working class poor and theyhad to work, helping their husbands
like in a shop or something like that.
And she didn't come from thatkind of a background at all.
Annie (13:37):
No, no, her parents, I mean, they lived on, they're kind of "une rente".
So they have property, and they justhad income coming in from property,
from bank accounts, from this and that.
Yeah.
Elyse (13:51):
But so, so it's interesting to see that she just forged ahead.
I mean, she was just this kind ofa bulldozer intellectually, and
she and Sartre became the centerof this very, very important group
of intellectuals and thinkers.
Interestingly, at some point lateron, near the end of her life, she was
talking about Paris and the fact thatshe lived for a while, when she was
(14:15):
even a child, near La Rotonde in theMontparnasse area, and at the end of
her life, she had an apartment acrossfrom the cemetery of Montparnasse, which
is actually where she is buried, andshe said: 'My life is Montparnasse'.
Annie (14:29):
Right.
Her life, I mean, watching those,all those documentaries about
her life, I thought, oh, I couldwrite a VoiceMap tour based on her
because it's all in the same area.
And I don't think very many peoplewould be interested in that, so I'm
probably not going to do it, but...
Elyse (14:44):
There's not that much to see except to say, Oh, she ate here, she
slept here, you know, that kind of thing.
Annie (14:49):
Yeah, but Saint Germain des Prés also had a big, you know, I do know
for a fact that in my Saint Germaindes Prés VoiceMap, I point you to
where she and Sartre had hotel rooms.
Elyse (15:03):
Uh huh.
Annie (15:03):
Because he lived in hotels.
Elyse (15:05):
He lived in hotels.
And she basically stayednext to him, basically.
And then, of course, they hadall these friends that were the
jazz people in Saint Germain.
I mean, this was all part of thatwhole epoch in any way, you know,
Boris Vian and all those people.
So, she was really afascinating woman in that way.
And so, this is the thing, though.
In reading about her, and as I mentionedto you just a few minutes before we went
(15:26):
on broadcast, I had to read, I minoredin French literature in university.
So I had to read her.
I mean, it was an assignment.
I read The Second Sex.
And I read, which one of the booksof her memoirs, but I don't remember
actually, because there are two or threevolumes, but I just remember some of the
things that were in the books, and theyhave stayed with me all these years.
(15:47):
Because at the same time, in TheSecond Sex, she talks about things
that certainly were pertinent evento me, as a very young person.
And then at the same time in hermemoirs, she just talks about
things that are very disturbing.
And so one of the things I find about herpersonally is that I can admire her ideas
(16:09):
as a feminist, independent, intellectualwoman, but I don't admire her.
And I don't admire her becauseI think that good part of her
existence was in contradictionto what she actually wrote about.
And so that upsets me, and itbothers me, not that it makes any
difference one way or the other interms of history or anything else.
(16:31):
But she had this complex ambiguity,because at the same time, she insisted on
the independence of women, she insistedon women being intellectual beings,
she also talked about something that isvery pertinent today, and that is that
being a woman is a social construct.
(16:51):
That it is not a destiny by sex,because you're born with a female sex.
And today, a lot of young people reallywould understand that very, very well.
Whereas at the time that she was living,that was not something that people
would be willing to talk about at all.
Annie (17:08):
Yes, right.
That's right.
Yeah.
She was revolutionary in many ways.
She was ahead of her time,let's put it that way.
Because I've heard, I heard her onmany interviews say that she doesn't
think that, so she was a libertarianwhen it comes to sexual freedom.
Elyse (17:23):
Absolutely.
Annie (17:24):
Right.
So she would have said, yeah, you cansleep with whoever you want, whatever sex,
I'm sure she wouldn't have batted an eyeat more than one gender, well, whatever.
So she was really extreme in thatway, as well as her political
positions as, whenever anybody puta microphone in front of her, she
(17:46):
would tell people, women need to havetheir own jobs and their own money.
Now, this is at a time when womencould not get a job without the
permission of their husbands,could not have a bank account.
Not, you couldn't open abank account as a woman.
Elyse (18:00):
But that was true even into the 1960s.
Annie (18:03):
Yeah.
Yeah.
You couldn't vote, of course, and soshe would constantly bring this up,
like, women need to have financialindependence, because without that
there's nothing else, but she alsopushed sexual, total freedom, like...
Elyse (18:19):
But it's interesting, I don't know about the interviews because I
did not see any of them, but in fact,in her writing at first, she refuted
the idea that she was doing this.
She did not admit to it.
She did not admit to it toomuch, much later in her life.
And in fact, two of the women,what happened was, and it's hard
to know exactly how this began.
(18:41):
But of course, we're talkingabout a time up till 1968 when
women were in school with women,and men were in school with men.
This was, there was no co ed educationin France until 1960, after 1968.
And so she was a professor forwomen in good women's high schools.
And then of course she was eventually inMoliere High School, which is in Paris.
(19:01):
And that's where she stayed until shestopped being a teacher completely.
But, she started having relationshipsin the real sense of the word
with some of the students.
Now, obviously, what I find, this is whyI find it problematic, is because she
would choose the most brilliant students.
That's like a given.
And at the same time, she was someonewho at first denied it, but apparently
(19:24):
two of the women who stayed in touchwith her for a certain amount of
time, and then eventually after shedied, were still alive and so wrote
about it, said it was a fact thatthey were having sexual relationships.
It wasn't just a mentorkind of relationship.
And she didn't want to admit it.
So she spouted things that she didnot, at first wish to really admit,
probably because it would've bannedher from a good part of society.
Annie (19:48):
Well, she could have lost her job.
Elyse (19:49):
Well, she did eventually.
And she was suspended twicefor complaints about it.
Today, she would be taken in frontof a tribunal, in front of a judge,
at the time she was simply suspended.
And the second time that thathappened, that was the end of her
teaching career in public education.
Annie (20:08):
All right, but Emmanuel Macron fell in love with his
teacher much older than him.
Now, we don't know if anything washappening back then, but it's not like
it doesn't happen still to this day.
Elyse (20:20):
No, course.
I'm not saying that it doesn't happen.
It's just that she was, she wasalso sharing these young women
with Jean Paul Sartre, whichmakes it little bit different.
It really makes it a little bitdifferent because, as you say,
libertarianism was certainly in the20s and 30s extremely important.
And not political libertarian.
(20:41):
No, but sexual freedom.
Yeah, morality, if you wantto call it that, I don't know
if that's really morality.
The fact is, what bothers me, is notso much that she did that, is that
she insisted that she wasn't doing it.
Okay.
And for a long time, and that it became,if you read some, and I know that in the
quotes, I translated some of the mostfamous of her statements about women in
(21:04):
terms of feminism that come out of TheSecond Sex, because I think that they are
the most important part of her heritage.
And some of them are really incredible.
For instance, it would be verydifficult for a woman to do the same
as a man in every circumstance untiluniversal equality is recognized.
She was aware of all of these things.
(21:25):
To be a woman is not a terrible fatality,one must never assume that having ovaries
condemns a woman to a lesser status.
So she was angry on some level.
I mean, there was a certain amountof anger in all of this, and yet,
she managed to forge a life that wastotally independent and radical in
relation to this kind of behavior.
(21:47):
To be truly free, othersmust be free also.
That's a given.
Ah, okay.
I think that it's really interesting thather pronouncements and what she wrote in
The Second Sex are so vivid and so realand of course it created a huge scandal
when it was published in 1949 because itwas extremely graphic about women, and
women's bodies, and women's functions.
Annie (22:09):
Right.
So I, she also wrote another book,I can't remember the title of it.
That was very graphic about women's bits.
Elyse (22:18):
Yes.
She talks about women's sexuality.
She talks about women's bodies and that'sfunctioning, and it's to break a taboo.
It's to regularly break a taboo.
It was, the book was considered to beutterly scandalous, absolutely horrifying.
Yet she's sold 30,000 copies the firstyear of that book, and it's been reprinted
(22:41):
ever since and it's still, it still sells.
Like it's, this is one that's perennial.
It's a basic book of feminist studies.
Annie (22:50):
Yeah, it is.
Elyse (22:51):
And so in her later life, I think it became clearer, at least to other
people, that what she was trying to dowas create a foundation of what is now
considered to be feminist thinking.
And then other people joined her whowere a bit younger, a generation younger,
and it became something that was veryimportant, which is why I was given the
(23:14):
book to read, even though it was in Frenchstudies, because it was a book that was
really considered to be important interms of the end of the 20th century.
But it's interesting to me, thatit's hard to know if she wrote the
book out of anger or not, becauseI don't see any anger in her.
But at the same time, she did many things.
(23:34):
For instance, she had a, it'svery well known in terms, she
talked about it and it was writtenabout in a lot of other things.
There was an Americanwriter named Nelson Algren,
Annie (23:43):
Yeah, yeah.
Elyse (23:44):
She was doing a lecture tour in the United States.
And she met him, and they actually,they fell in love and they had this
really passionate relationship thatlasted for a couple of years, and
then the end, and I remember, nowmaybe it's because I was really young.
I mean, when I starteduniversity, I was really young.
So I'm probably read this book whenI was 19, you know, who knows what I
(24:07):
was doing at the age of 19, not much.
So at the age of 19, I'm readingthis book, and she talks about
how much she loved this man.
And it was really passionate.
And yet she gave up that relationshipbecause she had this intellectual
relationship with Sartre thatshe did not want to lose.
And of course, I'm a 19 year oldgoing, Why would you do that?
(24:30):
You know, I mean, why would yougive up this man that seems to be
the love of your life, to go andbe with this guy who, number one,
does not want to live with you?
Number two, sleeps with zillionsof women all the time, and who is
simply your intellectual partner.
You know, you can still have anintellectual partner and it doesn't
(24:50):
have to be the person that youhave a passion for, you know.
Annie (24:54):
Sartre, like you mentioned earlier, also asked her to marry him so
that they could teach in the same place.
And she said No.
Elyse (25:01):
No.
Right.
Annie (25:02):
And this Nelson, he also asked her to marry him so that she could live
with him in the US and she said No.
Elyse (25:09):
No.
She said no.
Annie (25:11):
So the best way to never see Simone de Beauvoir again
was to ask her to marry you.
Exactly.
Elyse (25:16):
Except that with Sartre, she...
except with Sartre, but which apparently,you know, if you read, especially in
her memoirs, you really understand thatbeyond a certain point, it became a
meeting of minds more than anything else,and this was something that she needed
to have in her life, no matter what.
They became partners in theirpolitical activity, particularly
(25:40):
during and after World War II.
Now, this is something very curious.
She worked for Radio Vichy.
So there's a lot of speculation andcommentary because apparently, at the
beginning anyway, Radio Vichy was notas pro-Nazi as it became later on.
And she was basicallydoing cultural programs.
(26:01):
She was basically doing thingsthat were non political.
And I don't even know if it lasted formore than just a year or so that she did
that, but of course it was brought up toher afterwards, after World War II was
over, that she actually worked for them.
But at the time she didn't consider thatto be any problem whatsoever, you know.
Annie (26:19):
Their relationship with the Second World War was complicated because,
I think you could classify them asresistant in their heads, but they never
did anything about it, not a thing.
Which puts them right in line with mostFrench people, if you think about it.
Most French people never did anything.
A few entered the Resistance.
(26:40):
I mean, perhaps, I don't know, 5percent of the population maybe at most.
Don't quote me on that, I'm just guessing.
But, you know, they didn'tdo anything about it.
And her excuse was, well, we're notpolitical, you know, but then later they
became very, very, very, very political,to absurdity, as a matter of fact.
(27:00):
That's the reason why I think,I mentioned to you earlier that
with Simone Weil, there's no partof her life that I don't admire.
All of it.
Whereas Simone de Beauvoir, I admiresome of her writing, and her activities,
and what she promoted, but there'sa lot of it where I'm like, eww.
(27:23):
Yeah.
Yeah, I agree with you.
We don't always agree on which partswe go eww about, but it true, she is
not the most, she was a relativelycomplicated person in that sense, yes.
You're absolutely right.
And it is interesting to think that,now Sartre, for those of you out
there who really have no idea, Sartreis in a way, even more complicated
(27:43):
because he was a philosopher.
He wasn't just a philosophy teacher.
He was actually a philosopher.
I would say she was a writer.
She was basically a writer.
He was a philosopher.
And he was the inventor, if you wantto call it that, of existentialism.
Which some people have called verynihilistic, and other people have simply
said is more of a way of dealing with thereality of being a human being, making
(28:09):
moral choices without it being connectedin any way to religion, which is kind of
the way I see existentialism, you know?
Elyse (28:15):
But, it influenced a huge, two generations of writers and
two generations of thinkers.
And at first they, it was AlbertCamus who was very influenced by it.
And then he went off to sortof do his own thing, which is a
lot more humanistic in approach.
But he is really famous for beingthe originator, or maybe he's the
one who coined the term, I don'treally know, but the whole circle of
(28:38):
people who surrounded them were that.
And to me, I'm not sure I completelyunderstand it, but existentialism
should involve engagement inthings, and is not apolitical.
And so it's strange thatduring World War II they were
really pretty much apolitical.
Annie (28:54):
Yeah, I think they were very scared of what was happening and they
didn't want, they were afraid of whatmight happen if they opened their mouths.
They were still very young, notas famous as they became later.
And they had just enough fameto be noticed, but not so much
(29:15):
that they were out of reach.
Like, you know, when you getto a certain level of fame...
Elyse (29:20):
You think you're untouchable?
Annie (29:21):
Yeah, you might be untouchable.
You might be like Stephen King.
Stephen King constantly talkssmack about Donald Trump.
It's not going to hurt him.
Elyse (29:30):
No, but nobody cares, I mean, he's not a politician.
Annie (29:34):
Right, but he's untouchable in that sense, you know, it
won't make any difference.
Elyse (29:38):
Right.
Annie (29:39):
But if you're somebody much, much smaller, that has some fame but not so
much, you might be careful what you say.
Elyse (29:45):
But what's interesting then is that we come out of World War II and it is in
1949 that she publishes The Second Sex.
If I'm not mistaken, it wasin '46 that women were able
to vote for the first time.
So this is just post World War II.
And it is in '49 after having writtenquite a few books that she publishes
and makes a huge success, andbecomes notorious for The Second Sex.
(30:09):
And I think that isreally her seminal work.
I mean, her writing that is fiction isone thing, her essays are interesting, but
really, if you think about it, The SecondSex is groundbreaking in terms of talking
about women, and talking about theirequality, talking about their bodies.
The other person it makes me think ofwhose work I also read enormously at
(30:31):
a certain point in my life is DorisLessing, who of course won a Nobel Prize
in Literature and who's originally fromRhodesia, Zimbabwe, and then who went on
to live the rest of her life in England.
But she made no bones about thefact that she was writing as a
feminist, but she was writing fiction.
Whereas, I think, Simone de Beauvoirwas writing philosophical tracts that
(30:54):
she wanted people to pay attention to.
What is interesting is that ifyou quote some of the things from
her writing, it's aggressive.
It's not untrue, it's just that it's,there's a certain aggressivity in
it, but she herself seems to not havehad that anger in her as a person.
Annie (31:12):
Well, she laid it out in ways.
There's a quote of hers that I saw: 'Never forget that a political, (31:14):
undefined
economic, or religious crisis will beenough to challenge women's rights.
These rights are never vested.
You must remain vigilant your whole life.
Elyse (31:31):
And that, you can say is what's going on in some
parts of the world right now.
Annie (31:35):
Yeah, yeah, you can say that.
Elyse (31:37):
As soon as there's any kind of political crisis, economic crisis, the
first people who pay the price are women.
And that's where she was absolutely right.
And so she is really one of the foundingwomen of the very, very important group
of people who come after her, both in thearts, and in writing, and in politics.
(32:00):
If there hadn't been a Simonede Beauvoir, there would not be
other people, even people like...
Annie (32:08):
Christine Lagarde is the one you want.
Elyse (32:09):
That's the one I want.
So, I mean, all of these people who haveforged ahead and have taken on roles
that in the past were really exclusivelyfor men, they all owe a huge thanks
to Simone de Beauvoir, even if shebasically was a theoretician, she is
really one of the two or three peoplewho created the structure for all of
(32:31):
this to happen in the last 50, 60 years.
Annie (32:36):
So let's talk a little bit about things that happened
towards more the end of her life.
So this Nelson Algren was acommunist thinker as well, as far
as an American can be a communist.
So that probably influenced hersome, but later in her life,
she was a dedicated communist.
Like she really believed...
Elyse (32:57):
But she never joined the party.
Annie (32:58):
No, she didn't join the party, but that's all she ever not do.
She was invited by Russian, Chinese, Cuba,to be, you know, on official visits and
they would parade her and Sartre saying,see, these great French intellectuals are
with us and isn't that grand, whatever.
(33:20):
And they really promoted the ideaof communism in France, saying that
it was, that's how the world shouldbe run and totally ignored the
horrible things that were happening.
If they had inquired even alittle bit, they would have known.
(33:41):
I mean, Mao Zedong killed a lot of people.
Elyse (33:44):
Stalin, Stalin killed a lot of people.
I don't even think a lot is thecorrect word, I mean, the millions,
and millions, and millions.
Now, my understanding is, particularlyin France, but not only, that there was
a whole group of intellectuals, justimmediately post World War II, who became
what these were, that is what Simone deBeauvoir and Jean Paul Sartre were, which
(34:09):
is simply what is called fellow travelers.
That is, they were highly sympathetic toall communist causes, but they did not
actually belong to the Communist Party.
And because they were relativecelebrities, intellectual celebrities,
but there were also others who wereentertainment celebrities, they were
(34:30):
invited to these countries like Chinaand to Stalinistic Soviet Union, to
be shown off, and of course becamebasically the puppets by doing so.
Now, in the case of some people,they realized what was happening, and
that is the case of, for instance,Yves Montand and Simone Segnoret.
It took them a number of years, butthey eventually came out and spoke, and
(34:53):
admitted to having been used, and thenchanged, publicly changed their ideas.
But I don't know thatSimone de Beauvoir ever did.
Annie (35:01):
She did not.
So she had written a book called 'TheLong March', or 'The Longest March'
or something like that, that wasall in praise of what Mao was doing.
And she later said, okay, this was,I made a mistake, but she never
said that Mao was wrong, or wasa murderer, or any of that thing.
(35:26):
She just said, oh, my book went a littletoo far, you know, whereas Camus, for
instance, he just, he said, no, that isjust, we cannot treat people that way.
You know, because he was more of ahumanist and he cared more about the
fate of people, whereas Simone deBeauvoir and Jean Paul Sartre were
more, you know, the ideas of communismmade sense to them, and so it didn't
(35:49):
matter what it did in reality.
They just wanted a perfect politicalsystem, which of course it is not.
But they saw it that way.
And so they were reallycomplicated, I think.
And it's hard to not justgo, how can smart people like
them be taken in that way.
Elyse (36:09):
Sweetheart, you know, smart people are taken in by lots of things.
I mean, it isn't just communism.
I think that there was a time, Ithink, from what I understand, with
a certain number of these people,now, as you mentioned, I mean,
Simone de Beauvoir was a brain.
I mean, basically, you know, whateverelse you can say about her, she was a
brain, you know, and so was, so JeanPaul Sartre, I think that it was, as you
(36:34):
mentioned, it's the idea, the idealizationof something that somehow clouds the view
so that you don't see the reality of it.
Some people saw a realitysooner than later.
Others never gave up that idea.
I think that unfortunatelythat does happen.
And I think that probably theywere certainly not the only ones.
(36:55):
It's just that the more somebody is famousin public, the more it has an effect and
a kind of snowball effect, because theseare people who do influence other people
and influence other people's thinking.
You also wind up having a lot ofrecrimination afterwards because
why did you take that petition?
Why did you not speak outagainst this and that?
I don't know, maybe it's just my gettingolder is making me more, I don't know
(37:19):
what the word is, it's like peopleget duped all the time, you know?
Yeah, we do.
We do.
You know, we do.
And I think that the problem was thatcoming out of World War II and the
devastation of fascism, and the Nazis,and seeing what happened in France and
they both were children during WorldWar I, I think that you look for an
ideal and there's a point at whicheven when you have that kind of
(37:42):
a great intellect, you try not tosee the bad sides of it somehow.
I mean, that's hard.
Annie (37:47):
Yeah, they were in an intellectual bubble that didn't let them see kind
of broadly enough what was happening.
Elyse (37:55):
And so of course, there was a lot of falling out among all these,
but there was a massive group ofintellectuals who developed in France
who did a lot to influence generalintellectual thinking post World War II.
They were the group that were the mostinfluential everywhere in Western world.
And it was the French.
It really was.
And so, the artists and the writers,this was coming out of World War II.
(38:19):
They were the ones that were tryingto postulate new ways of thinking,
new ways of being, I don't know.
Annie (38:25):
They weren't perfect human beings, but they had interesting ideas.
And the other thing that happenedtowards the end of her life is
that she was dead set against thecolonization of any sort, which France
didn't have as many colonies as, say,the English did, but we had plenty.
And French people didn't exitout of their colonies as semi
(38:48):
gracefully as the English did.
Like, the war in Algeria was terribleand she was dead set against it.
Elyse (38:55):
She signed, she was one of the signers of the petition about the
liberation, about independence forAlgeria, but also she was one of the
founders of the movement to help womenwho had been tortured during the war in
Algeria, specifically focusing on women asvictims of the war, because a lot of women
(39:15):
who fought on the side of the Algerians,there weren't that many women that fought
on the side of the French, but on the sideof the Algerians were taken and tortured.
And so she was one of the group of womenwho created this petition to free these
women and to not have them convicted asbeing traitors or something like that.
And then she, again, signed the petitionlater, if I'm not mistaken, it was in
(39:38):
19, what, 1970 something, the petitionabout abortion, the famous petition
of the 343, many of whom are famouswomen who signed a petition saying
that they had had, at least once intheir life, an abortion and that was
the moment to have the law passed.
Annie (39:59):
Right, and we did another episode about Simone Weil and where
we talked extensively about abortionand what her thinking was about that.
Because Simone Weil was very, wasa traditional kind of person as far
as her personal life was concerned.
She married, she had three boys,as far as I know, no affairs,
whatever, you know, she was just atraditional run of the mill woman.
(40:24):
And I think in many ways, in my opinionanyway, the feminist views held by
these traditional women hit harderthan the ones by very free women.
Because you can always say,oh, look, she's just...
Elyse (40:41):
A crazy bohemian.
Annie (40:42):
Yeah, yes.
And that's why she has those thoughts.
Whereas with Simone Weil, you know, shewas very traditional, but she still said,
you know, we have to have women have thefreedom to make decisions about their
own bodies, and their own bank accounts,and their own voting and all of that.
And these concepts are being challengedin some countries and, it's really
(41:07):
never, the fight is never won.
Elyse (41:10):
No, not unless it's made into constitutional law,
which it has been in France.
It has been.
And interestingly enough, so themanifesto of the 343 was in fact,
of course, in 1971, which was justbefore when it went into places a law.
And then in 1977, so in 1977,just about 70, she's 69 years old,
(41:32):
she became editor-in-chief of amagazine called Radical Feminists.
And this is the activity thatshe continued actually up until
her death, at the age of 78.
She went back.
Jean Paul Sartre died in 1980.
He was just a couple ofyears older than her.
So the last few years of her life,I don't know if she gave many public
(41:53):
interviews, but she just went back toher writing, doing her feminist writing.
And I would assume that by then,certainly by the 1980s, she realized the
influence that she had had, both by thewriting of The Second Sex, more than her
fiction, because she did win the Goncourtin 1954, which was five years later.
(42:17):
But I think the books that influencedthe world the most and has made her
stay in history the most are thebooks that she has written about
the feminine condition, you know.
Annie (42:25):
Right.
And she never had any children, whichis another thing that she was very,
it was shocking back then to hearthat a woman didn't want to marry,
didn't want to have any children.
That was like, people couldn'tunderstand that, especially
men couldn't understand that.
And she just thought all ofthese barriers need to be broken.
(42:49):
Now, I don't think she ever said to womenwho were married and were having children,
you made the wrong choice, but she wantedthings to be, she wanted it to be possible
for a young woman to choose whether shewanted to marry and have children or not.
Elyse (43:07):
And you know, that is still interestingly, maybe less so in the
immediate young generation rightnow, but there is a carryover of that
because you sometimes have people say,Oh, how come you don't have children?
You know, there's this assumption that,Oh, there must be something wrong.
It couldn't be simply a choice.
(43:29):
I mean, for some people it is achoice, for some people it's not,
unfortunately, it is just whathappens, but we don't say that to men.
Annie (43:36):
Exactly.
That's the thing.
We never ask a man do you have children,and if he says no, you don't go, oh,
poor dear, what's wrong with you?
Yeah.
Elyse (43:46):
Yeah.
Annie (43:46):
Are you a violently feminist person, or are you just broken?
Elyse (43:53):
Right, right, no.
Annie (43:55):
Why do we do it to women?
Elyse (43:57):
Well, there you are.
I mean, this is your...
so she was extremely importantfor all of these things.
And I think that at the sametime, it's just inevitable.
The book that she wrote in1949, which is now what?
It's 50, 60, 70, 75 years old.
It's probably, if I reread it now, itwould have some things that I would
find very outdated, you know, but at thesame time, it was a breakthrough book.
(44:22):
And the fact that she talked aboutwomen, both in terms of their physical
desire and in their intellectualindependence, was just something
that had not been done before.
There were little bits of that, you know,you get the suffragettes in England,
you get people at the end of the 19thcentury who are, even Madame Curie, I
mean, people who have great intellectualpower, but they were married and had
(44:44):
children at the same time, you know, theidea of making this an absolute case of
liberty was just something totally new.
And that is really Simone de Beauvoir.
Annie (44:54):
Yeah, she was, I think she's an interesting person.
I really enjoyed reading the book aboutthe end of the life of her mother.
I thought that was very profound.
I would recommend that one.
Would you recommend other books by her?
I mean, is it worth, isshe worth reading today?
Elyse (45:12):
I think the memoirs are actually really interesting, but I think
that if you haven't done studies onabout, if you don't know any of these
people, it might not mean that muchbecause she mentions all of these
intellectuals of the 30s, 40s, 50s, and60s, some of whom are not even alive
anymore, but they were the powerhouse.
(45:34):
This was, I mean, France wasthe intellectual powerhouse mid
20th century in general anyway.
I found it interesting, even thoughI had no idea who some of these
people were, because she talksabout her place in all of this.
So, I don't know, I would be interestedmaybe in re reading some of those
texts again, to see how interestingI find them now, but I think mostly
(45:56):
they're interesting to see how shepositions herself as a woman in
the midst of all of this, becauseit was pretty male heavy, anyway.
Annie (46:04):
Yeah, and they might be in the public domain by now.
Elyse (46:07):
I think they are.
Annie (46:08):
Yeah, I wonder if I could find a, like a...
somebody who read The Second Sex.
Elyse (46:15):
Recently?
Annie (46:16):
Yeah.
I mean, not on Audible.
It's not on Audible, well, it is onAudible, but I would have to use a credit.
And I was like, ah, andit's a really long book.
I was like, I don't reallywant to listen to all of that.
Elyse (46:27):
Can't believe that I actually read it all.
Annie (46:29):
Maybe you didn't...
Elyse (46:30):
I'm pretty sure I did.
Maybe you read the Cliff's Notes.
Ah, no, no, no.
I did read the Cliff's Notes for a coupleof the literature pieces that we had to
read in class because I just couldn'twade my way through it, you know, but...
Yeah, well, the professors I hadthen are probably all gone and in
heaven right now, so it wouldn'tmake any difference, you know.
But no, I did read the book, and I,it left a lasting impression on me.
(46:53):
It really did.
Annie (46:54):
And also the fact that it was such a controversial like, shocking book, I
think would make people want to read it.
I mean, a person like you, I thinkyou'd want to read it, because
it's, like a shocking book.
Elyse (47:08):
Well, especially, I mean, I grew up in a, you know, really
relatively nice, conventional middle,lower middle class family, you know.
I mean, I was supposed to growup to be the good little girl
and be well behaved and do allof that kind of stuff, you know.
Yeah, I mean you were for the most part.
Well, I was until I got intoart school and got the when
(47:28):
hell broke loose, you know.
Annie (47:30):
One of one of these days we're going to have to do an
episode that's called When AllHell Broke Loose with Elyse.
Elyse (47:38):
I think that maybe there are excerpts that stay in my mind after all
these years, just because I was froma relatively sheltered background and
it was like, Oh, you know, I mean, youread these things, you go, Oh, you know,
I don't think that young people todaywould have the same reaction, you know.
Annie (47:55):
Maybe not.
Elyse (47:56):
It's a totally different world.
Annie (47:57):
Maybe not.
But all these things that shewrote about the female bits,
like, it's like nobody cared.
Like nobody wanted to see it ortalk about it, or explore it or,
like, it was like, mm mm we...
Elyse (48:11):
Well, okay, now, there is a thing though, that for instance, you
have writers, now, I may be wrongabout the chronology, but you have
a writer like Anaïs Nin, who wasinvolved with the writer Henry Miller.
These were people who wrote things thatwere fiction, and it was scandalous,
and in fact, in some cases, itwas actually banned or censored.
(48:33):
But it was considered to befiction, it was sold as fiction.
Whereas the differences that Simone deBeauvoir was writing not fiction, because
basically you can get away with a lot ofstuff if you call it fiction, you know?
Sure.
Whereas what she was doing was documentingwhat it was like to be a woman.
And I have to say that thosepieces did not shock me so much as
(48:56):
they were really a revelation toread a woman talking about them.
She also wrote something that hasstayed with me all these years, and
it's actually, unfortunately, even morepertinent now than it was before, and
that is, she said, as you get older,your body gets older, but you stay the
same young spirit that you always are.
(49:19):
You know, you just are,you are just you, you know.
As such, there are lots of thingslike that in the book that are
really, really interesting to read.
I don't remember, to be honest,if she talks about some of the
intrigues in her personal life.
That's something else.
I think she talked moreabout the female condition.
A woman in the United States who followedgeneration later is Germaine Greer,
(49:41):
who I think is actually still alive.
She must be quite old now.
But who, who basically followed witha book about the female condition, but
was much more conciliatory towards men.
Annie (49:52):
And so, to end on a happy note, let's say that if you want
to follow in Simone de Beauvoirfootsteps, go visit Montparnasse.
Go to the cemetery at Montparnasse.
She and Sartre are together, and they'renot at Père Lachaise but at Montparnasse.
Montparnasse has a lot ofinteresting graves and people
(50:16):
are buried there as well.
And also La Rotonde is a lovelyrestaurant, I really like it.
And also go to Saint Germain desPrés because that's where a lot
of these people hung out, andlived a part of their life anyway.
Elyse (50:32):
Yes, and you can sort of feel the ghosts of Simone de Beauvoir,
Jean Paul Sartre, maybe Boris Vianand all these people hanging out
in the cafes right around there.
They're there in spirit all the time.
Annie (50:46):
Thank you so much, Elyse.
You're welcome Annie.
Au revoir.
Again, I want to thank my patrons forgiving back and supporting the show.
Patreon supporters get new episodesas soon as they are ready and ad-free.
If that sounds good to you, please be likethem, follow the link in the show notes.
(51:09):
And patrons get many exclusive rewardsfor doing that, you can see all
the details at patreon.com/joinus.
And a special shout out this week toour new Join Us in France champions,
Verity Dimock, who is a new yearlypatron from Canada, Pam from Australia,
(51:35):
Arthur Siegel, Ashley Senfield, MarthaMeyer, Karen Dunn, Diane Goldman,
Ellen Pearson, Virginie Robertson,Timothy Dyess, Azura Sanchez, and J.
R.
Hill.
Karen wrote (51:53):
'I've been listening to your podcast for about six months.
It has been extremelyhelpful and entertaining.
Thank you so much forvaluable information.
Thank you for those kind words, Karen.
And thank you, Teresa Perdue,Ted Nunn, and Chris Larson for
renewing your yearly membership.
(52:13):
Thank you, Heather Saint Jacques,Stephen Struck, and Alexis Butler
for editing your pledge up.
And to all my current patrons, it'swonderful to have you on board in the
community of travel enthusiasts andFrancophiles who keep this podcast going.
And to support Elyse, of course,you've heard today how wonderful
(52:34):
she is, go to patreon.com/ElysArt.
My thanks also to an anonymous donor whosent in a generous one time donation using
any green button on joinusinfrance.comthat says 'Tip your guide'.
That person wrote (52:52):
'Annie, thank you for your amazing work.
I prefer to remain anonymous.
Happy Holidays', thank you, and HappyNew Year to you as well, anonymous donor.
I want to share an email exchangeI had with Brenda Johnson soon
after she became a patron.
I edited what she wrote for brevity.
Bonjour Annie, I counted up andI have visited France 16 times.
(53:16):
My first trip to Europe was in 1980.
My college organized five weektrips and I went on the trip
with our art history professor.
My most recent trip to France was inthe Fall of 2022 when we flew in and
out of Geneva and spent two weeksin the Haute Savoie and the Jura.
In between were many independenttrips to explore all over France.
(53:40):
I would buy the Michelin green guidefor the area we were planning to visit
and my vacation would start in my headas soon as I started the itinerary.
I had hoped to travel more when Iquit working but my mom had a serious
series of health setbacks and liveswith me for increasing amounts of time.
She died three months ago.
(54:00):
I'm sorry to hear that.
And I was so blessed by the time wewere together, including one trip
years ago to Switzerland and Paris.
So for the last year, I have so enjoyedlistening to your podcast and remembering
my experiences in places you talkabout and planning for future visits.
Thank you very much, Brenda.
It's heartwarming to readtestimonials like this.
(54:23):
I know that the Join Us in France travelpodcast is not going to cure cancer, okay?
But it does provide entertainment,comfort, and company to
people who love France.
And there's absolutelynothing wrong with that.
I hope you get to come back at some point.
Somebody left a lovely review ofmy food tour in Les Halles, a very
(54:43):
informative and entertaining tour.
I have stayed in Rue Montorgueilneighborhood during several past visits
in Paris, but still learned a lot eventhough I'm familiar with the area.
I especially appreciate thehistorical perspective of the region
and insights into the restaurantsand shop, trusted repeat customer.
(55:04):
This is a fantastic neighborhoodfor all gourmands to explore.
All of Annie Sargent's VoiceMap walkingtours are excellent, she shares her
knowledge and love of Paris in thewarmest and most engaging manner.
Well, thank you very much.
About my Montmartre tour, truly excellent,this tour had so many great stories of
the area, I feel lucky to have foundit, highly recommended, thank you.
(55:27):
And about my Saint-Germain-des-Préstour, fantastic tour, easy to follow,
took me places I would not have venturedwithout it, and great stories to go along.
Another thing about my tours isthat I update them when necessary.
I'll be on my way to Paris next week,actually, or the week after that, I
can't remember, anyway, soon to changemy Île de la Cité tour, which includes
(55:50):
Notre Dame, because things have changeda lot around there, haven't they?
I mean, it's a beautiful,beautiful change.
And remember that podcast listenersget a big discount for buying
these tours from my website.
And if you buy directly from me, rememberit's a manual process, I'm not a robot, so
give me a few hours to send you the codes.
(56:11):
If you need them immediately, get themfrom the VoiceMap app directly, and then
that's a direct download immediately.
If you want to read more reviews of thesetours, go to joinusinfrance.com/VMR.
That stands for VoiceMap Reviews.
And if you're thinking about a trip toFrance this year and have a hard time
deciding what to do, I can help you withmy one on one consultations on Zoom.
(56:34):
For most podcast listeners, theBonjour service is all you need.
We talk for an hour and Ihelp you make some choices.
Okay?
Because a lot of people, they're notsure how long to spend, do it this way
or that way, I can cut to the chasefor you because I've done these things.
I know that people who listento the podcast have a lot of
(56:54):
information, they know a lot, andBonjour is usually all you need.
But if you need more in depth and youwant a day by day itinerary and all of
that, you can sign up for a VIP service.
And you can see all of the details andbook that at joinusinfrance.com/boutique.
All right, let's talk about newholiday rental regulations in France.
(57:17):
This is what you need to know.
The French government is tighteningrules on short term holiday rentals
effective January 1st, 2025.
The new law aims to address thehousing shortage that affects locals
especially in populartourist destinations.
Here's what changes to expect.
(57:38):
Number one, mandatory registration.
Any property rented out, evenoccasionally, must be registered
with local authorities and havea unique registration number.
False declarations could resultin fines up to 20,000 Euros.
So that's serious, and I'm sure alot of people who thought they could
(57:58):
get away with not registering are nowgoing to think, ah, maybe I should.
Number two, change of use authorization,renting out second homes or properties
as furnished holiday accommodationsrequire a format change of use.
Failure to comply may leadto a 10,000 Euro fine.
So again, this is aregistration type of deal.
(58:22):
Number three, energy efficiency rules.
Newly registered rentals must meetstricter energy performance ratings.
Existing rentals have up to 10 yearsto comply with these requirements.
This is affecting all rentals, whetherthey are long term or short term.
And if you ask me, it's a good thing.
We need to do better withenergy efficiency in our homes.
(58:45):
Number four, tax reforms.
Tax allowances for furnished touristrentals will decrease, aligning more
closely with residential rental rates.
And classified tourist accommodationswill see allowances drop to 30 percent
of annual revenue under 15,000 Euros.
So, this is because, so far, it wasmore advantageous to rent a property,
(59:11):
an apartment, as a short term rentalthan to rent it for a long term rental.
And so they are reversingthat and they are now making
those two things more aligned.
And that means that some people will stopdoing short term rentals for tourism.
Number five, rental capsfor primary residences.
(59:33):
The annual limit for renting outprimary residences as holiday rentals
is reduced from 120 to 90 days.
Okay, so, really, it has to be occasionaland not, because 120 days is quite a lot.
Number six, local authority powers, localgovernments can impose stricter rules.
(59:56):
And by local governments, we mean cities.
Including rental bans in specificareas, such as Montmartre and the Marais
in Paris, because there it is out ofcontrol, people cannot find a place to
live, because just about every propertythere is just for short term rentals.
And that has to stop.
(01:00:17):
I'm all for travel, but come on.
So the law also affects second homeowners who must now declare rental
income to French tax authorities,even if they reside abroad.
So there might be some of youlistening who own property
in France and rent it out.
Well, it affects you as well.
Airbnb responded by saying that thesechanges could harm families relying
(01:00:41):
on rental income, while some localsapplaud the measures as essential
to protecting community housing.
And for that, yes, it's, I mean,that's a political question.
Personally, I think that it's okayto rent your home so long as you're
willing to play by the rules.
And it's fine to impose somerules on property owners.
(01:01:04):
I think you should consider thesenew regulations if planning to
rent property in France, eitheras an owner or as a renter.
I agree that rentals make sense for folkswho travel with children and families.
They also make sense for folks whowant to cook most of their own meals.
And I wanted you to be prepared forchanges, possibly price increases as
(01:01:27):
owners pass the cost of renovationsand regulations onto the renters.
My thanks to podcast editors,Anne and Christian Cotovan,
who produced the transcripts.
Next podcast, an episode withKatherine Butler about how to
enjoy a romantic vacation in Paris.
And remember, Patrons get anad-free version of this episode,
(01:01:50):
click in the link in the show notesof this episode to be like them.
Thank you for listening.
And I hope you join me next time sowe can look around France together.
Au revoir.
The Join Us in France travelpodcast is written, hosted, and
produced by Annie Sargent, andCopyright 2025 by AddictedToFrance.
(01:02:11):
It is released under a CreativeCommons attribution, non-commercial,
no derivatives license.
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