Gendering Depersonalization: Simone de Beauvoir's ‘Monologue’ and R. D. Laing

Tidd examines, within a Laingian perspective, how gendered depersonalization and, specifically, the alienation of the female is dramatized in Simone de Beauvoir's "Monologue," the second story of "La Femme rompue" (1967). Drawing on R. D. Laing's work on the social construction of schizophrenia, Tidd argues that Murielle is a depersonalized or negated figure within the family structure, who further enacts this depersonalization upon her daughter, Sylvie, to the point of suicide.