Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter by Simone de Beauvoir Page B

the corridor where my sister slept and at the end of which was my father’s study; from my bed I could hear my father talking to my mother in the evenings, and this peaceful murmur often lulled meto sleep. But one evening my heart almost stopped beating; in a calm voice which held barely a trace of curiosity, Mama asked: ‘Which of the two do you like best?’ I waited for Papa to say my name, but he hesitated for a moment which seemed to me like an eternity: ‘Simone is more serious-minded, but Poupette is so affectionate. . . .’ They went on weighing the pros and the cons of our case, speaking their inmost thoughts quite freely; finally they agreed that they loved us both equally well: it was just like what you read in books about wise parents whose love is the same for all their children. Nevertheless I felt a certain resentment. I could not have borne it if one of them had preferred my sister to myself; if I was resigned to enjoying an equal share of their affection, it was because I felt that it was to my advantage to do so. But I was older, wiser, and more experienced than my sister: if my parents felt an equal affection for us both, then at least I was entitled to more consideration from them; they ought to feel how much closer I was to their maturity than my sister.
    I thought it was a remarkable coincidence that heaven should have given me just these parents, this sister, this life. Without any doubt, I had every reason to be pleased with what fate had brought me. Besides, I was endowed with what is known as a happy disposition; I have always found reality more rewarding than the mirages of the imagination; now the things whose existence was most real to me were the things I owned myself: the value I attached to them protected me from all disappointments, nostalgias, and regrets; my affection for them overcame all baser longings. Blondine, my doll, was old-fashioned, dilapidated, and badly dressed; but I wouldn’t have exchanged her for the most gorgeous doll queening it in a smart shop window: the love I had for her made her unique and irreplaceable. I wouldn’t have changed the park at Meyrignac for any earthly paradise, or our apartment for any palace. The idea that Louise, my sister, and my parents might be any different from what they were never entered my head. And as for myself, I couldn’t imagine myself with any other face, or with any other body: I felt quite satisfied with the way I was.
    It is not a very big step from contentment to complacency. Highly satisfied with the position I occupied in the world, I regarded it as a specially privileged one. My parents were exceptional human beings, and I considered our home to be exemplary in every way. Papa liked making fun of people, and Mama had a shrewdcritical bent; few were the persons who found favour in their eyes, but I never heard anyone run them down: hence their way of life could be taken to represent the absolute norm of behaviour. Their superiority was reflected on myself. In the Luxembourg Gardens, we were forbidden to play with strange little girls: this was obviously because we were made of finer stuff. Unlike the vulgar race of boys and girls, we did not have the right to drink from the metal goblets that were chained to the public fountains; grandmama had made me a present of an opalescent shell, a mother-of-pearl chalice from which I alone might drink: like my horizon blue greatcoat, it was an exclusive model. I remember a Mardi-Gras at which our bags were filled, not with common confetti, but with rose petals. My mother bought her cakes only from specially designated pastrycooks: the éclairs made by the family baker might as well have been constructed of plaster, so inedible did we consider them: the delicacy of our stomachs, too, distinguished us from baser mortals. While the majority of the children in my circle took a popular children’s magazine called La Semaine de Suzette, I was presented with a