66 SOCIAL SCIENTIST by dwelling on the historical and material underpinnings defining female social roles in China. In a later work, Old Age (1970), de Beauvoir showed a similar empathy, erudition and creativity in addressing the problems of aging in a society obsessed with youth and eternal material life, and haunted by the fear of death. Her important social and psychological insights in this area have probably not yet been fully understood. Perhaps, like the Second Sex, Old Age has anticipated future concerns, and a work produced by de Beauvoir in relative isolation will find its expression in colFective consciousness later. In her novels, de Beauvoir explored—with sensitivity and often devas-tatingly painful clarity—the moral dilemmas and emotional needs that create or prevent human happiness. She Came to Stay (1943) and The Mandarins (1945) are clearly autobiographically inspired, and highlight the difficulties of coming to terms with a conscious and continuous choice of'individual freedom', with the demands that it poses on oneself and others. But de Beauvoir could also be perceptive of other situations. In The Blood of Others (1948), Les Belles Images (1966) and The Woman Destroyed (1967), she dealt sensitively with deep problems of loss of security, of identity, of love and emotional support—and the complex means of coping with such loss. Her prose was rough-hewn, basic and spontaneous rather than elegant, and this adds a sense of urgency to the search for honesty which characterised all her work. The roots of this search have been best described by de Beauvoir herself in All Said And Done (1972): "My natural bent certainly does not lead me to suppose that the worst is inevitable. Yet I am committed to looking reality in the face and speaking of it without pretence : and who dares to say that it is a pleasant sight ?....To fight unhappiness one must first expose it, which means that one dispel the mystifications behind which it is hidden so that people do not have to think about it. It is because I reject lies and running away that I am accused of pessimism; but this rejection implies hopes—the hope that the truth my be of use. And this is a more optimistic attitude than the choice of indifference, ignorance or sham." JAYATI GHOSH Centre of Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.