Essai

Living with Mother

Sartre and the problem of Maternity

Benedict O'Donohoe

Michel Contat, Sartre's bibliographer and the foremost authority on his work, has pointed out that 'Sartre's mother' was the most important woman in his life: it's not Simone de Beauvoir, like people think - no, no, it was actually Mummy - he lived with Mummy, you know...' In the same interview, citing Freud, Contat attributes Sartre's ‘genius' to the ‘love of a beautiful young mother', the conviction that she ‘has a genius […] and the very strong relationship between mother...