| "One is not born, but rather becomes a woman- The Second Sex (New York: Vintage Books, 1973), 301 Born in the morning of January 9, 1908, Simone-Ernestine-Lucie-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir was a precocious and intellectually curious child from the beginning. Beauvoir's intellectual zeal was nourished by her father who provided her with carefully edited selections from the great works of literature and who encouraged her to read and write from an early age. Beauvoir always wanted to be a writer and a teacher, rather than a mother and a wife and pursued her studies with vigor |