French philosopher and novelist Simone de Beauvoir was born in 1908 to a middle-class Parisian family. She later rebelled against her strict Roman Catholic mother and renounced her religion. Beauvoir studied philosophy at the famous university Sorbonne, where she met and started a relationship with Jean-Paul Sartre. After university, Beauvoir taught philosophy, having to support herself taught to her value independence, she then swore never to marry. However, she and Sartre vowed to stay together by remaining honest and open. This theme of freedom is the foundation of existentialist thought, pervasive in de Beauvoir's novels, often based on her own experiences that are examined from an existentialist perspective. But, she tried to avoid labeling