Today’s Google Doodle celebrates the life of Simone de Beauvoir, the French writer and feminist, who paved the way for 20th century feminism with her book The Second Sex.
Simone was born on this day in 1908 in Paris and became one of the great feminist writers of the century and one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialism. Her relationship with Jean Paul Sartre, a fellow novelist and editor, was almost as famous as her writing.
Some of her best known novels include She Came to Stay and Mandarins. The Doodle shows a cartoon image of de Beauvoir against the backdrop of a Parisian street, a reference to the place where she lived and died.
The Google Doodles are clever ways of getting new generations interested in history. A modern twist on a ‘word of the day’, the Google Doodle acts as a daily encyclopaedia, providing nuggets of information that are relevant to that particular day, and important enough to have their own homepage dedication.
The Google Doodle is also different in many countries, with some days having a number of animations or images which are specific to certain countries. On January 7, Malaysia’s Google Doodle celebrated the life of Yasmin Ahmad, a film director and scriptwriter from Malaysia, whilst the US doodle honoured Zora Neale Hurston, an African American author and anthropologist.
Ebooks of some of de Beauvoir’s work are available on Amazon, so bring some of that 20th century breakthrough feminism to your 21st century reading technology.
