Introduced to André Gide by an early mentor, Simone de Beauvoir devoured his work. Strait is the Gate takes its title from the King James Bible: “Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.” Though nodding toward modernism, the novel remains, at heart, a Romantic story of doomed love: its restraint, its suppressed agony, are almost unbearable.

Written in the first person, Gide uses letters and diary entries to reveal contrasting perspectives. During an uneasy walk after a long absence, Jérôme recalls:

My head was aching so badly that I could not extract a single idea from it; to keep myself in countenance, or because I thought that the gesture might serve instead of words, I had taken Alissa’s hand, which she let me keep. Our emotion, the rapidity of our walk, and the awkwardness of our silence, sent the blood to our faces; I felt my temples throbbing; Alissa’s colour was unpleasantly heightened; and soon the discomfort of feeling the contact of our damp hands made us unclasp them and let them drop sadly to our sides.

Days later, Alissa writes:

But when our lugubrious expedition to Orcher came to an end without a word, when, above all, our hands unclasped and fell apart so hopelessly, I thought my heart would have fainted within me for grief and pain. And what distressed me most was not so much that your hand let go of mine, but my feeling that if yours had not, mine would have done so, for my hand no longer felt happy in yours.

Later she adds: “[…] your love was above all intellectual, the beautiful tenacity of a tender and faithful mind.”
The idea of “intellectual love” lingers: devastating in its accuracy, difficult to forget.