Costals and Andrée Hacquebaut

Simone de Beauvoir’s account of Costals and Andrée Hacquebaut treats their relationship not as a mutual romance but as a demonstration of power. Costals’s intermittent sympathy and promises do not undo his condescension: he seeks to shape Andrée, provoke her abasement, and preserve himself as the sole judge of the relationship. Beauvoir also argues that Montherlant’s portrayal makes Andrée’s attempt to exist as an autonomous person look like a failure, revealing the gendered assumptions built into the depiction.

Andrée and the Ideal of Femininity

Beauvoir argues that Montherlant does not dismantle the myth of the Eternal Feminine so much as recast it as a standard women cannot escape. In this scheme, femininity is defined by what it supposedly lacks, while a woman who tries to think and act as an independent subject is condemned as neither properly feminine nor genuinely human. Andrée becomes the test case for that double bind: her effort to make herself a person is presented as a transformation into a grotesque figure.

The description of Andrée is arranged to make her seem to confirm Costals’s judgments. She is portrayed as ugly, ungainly, badly dressed, and dirty; even the limited culture attributed to her is treated as a flaw that destroys her femininity. Costals says she is intelligent and claims sympathy for her, but Beauvoir observes that Montherlant’s presentation continually encourages the reader to see her as stupid and irritating. The discrepancy matters: Andrée’s character is filtered through a narrative that appears to grant her qualities only to turn them into evidence against her.

Condescension and Unequal Exchange

Costals’s treatment of women rests on the pleasure of remaining above them. Beauvoir notes that he sometimes answers women’s letters carefully, yet closes one reply to an enthusiastic peasant by doubting that she can understand him and presenting his attention as a concession. The gesture offers help or recognition on terms that preserve the hierarchy: he decides what the woman can comprehend and treats his response as generosity.

He also expresses a wish to shape a woman into his own likeness, rather than recognize her as an independent person. With Solange, he amuses himself by manufacturing happy memories and describes his desired influence as making her resemble an accessory to him. Beauvoir reads this impulse as part of the same structure as his condescension toward Andrée: a woman’s value is measured by how readily she can be fashioned around male desire.

Costals’s idea of generosity likewise secures his advantage. He imagines himself as a giver of pleasure, peace, warmth, strength, and joy, while denying that a woman gives anything in return. Paying mistresses further reassures him that he owes them nothing. Beauvoir stresses the asymmetry in this self-image: even where an encounter might be understood as an exchange, Costals casts himself as benefactor and the woman as someone permanently indebted to him.

Pity, Promises, and Control

Costals’s pity does not lead to a durable obligation. Beauvoir describes him as capable of feeling sympathy for women he regards as unfortunate and of making promises: he says he will help Andrée and marry Solange. When his pity passes, however, so do the promises. He considers himself entitled to change his mind, because the rules of the relationship are effectively set by him alone.

The broken promise to Andrée is therefore more than a change of feeling. It illustrates a relationship in which Costals can offer hope without accepting responsibility for what that hope means to her. His apparent tenderness and his refusal to follow through belong to the same arrangement: each lets him act according to his own preference while leaving Andrée to bear the consequences.

Humiliation and Beauvoir’s Critique

Beauvoir’s sharpest charge is that Costals does not merely observe women’s supposed inferiority; he works to produce the abasement that will seem to prove it. She says that he plays a sadistic game with Andrée, seeking the satisfaction of seeing her debase herself. His conduct thus completes the logic of the portrayal: first the woman is placed in a subordinate position, then her response to that position is treated as proof that she deserves it.

Andrée’s relationship with Costals becomes, in Beauvoir’s reading, an example of how female autonomy is discredited. The narrative gives Costals the authority to define her intelligence, character, and worth, while presenting his judgments as though they were objective. Beauvoir’s critique turns attention from the alleged defects of Andrée to the power that produces and interprets them: the relationship’s central imbalance is not an accidental mismatch, but a structure in which Costals keeps the freedom to judge and withdraw while Andrée is made to appear culpable for trying to become a subject.