Colette: Contribution

Natalie Allen
Colette: Contribution


Across the tumultuous decades in which she lived, Colette never ceased to make a contribution to her society through writing and other endeavors. A journalist as well as an author of fiction, Colette was one of the first women to report on WWI from the front lines, and she also covered some of the greatest criminal trials of her era. During the war, she set up a hospital for the wounded at her husband’s St. Malo estate, and was later awarded the title of Chevalier of the Legion of Honour for this service. Always interested in the cultural and social actualities of her day, Colette rose to the position of literary editor at Le Matin, a major Parisian newspaper. There, wrote columns on a wide variety of subjects, from fashion, theater and film to unemployment and domestic violence.
Today, we know Colette best for her novels, most of which are strongly autobiographical in nature. In La Vagabond (The Vagabond), Colette drew from her experience as a music hall performer and a divorcée to reflect upon social problems in Belle Epoque France. The poverty, illness, and depression of artists, the hardship but also the liberation of living independently as a woman are major themes in Colette’s writing.
It is certainly this last question, that of womanhood, which interested Colette particularly and with which she experimented most extensively in her works. Her narratives continually depart from traditional uses of voice and plot, and her representations of gender and sexuality are radical for her time. In The Vagabond, Colette refuses a classic “happy ending” when the narrator, “René Néré,” refuses an offer of marriage from her lover, finding her purpose instead in writing. In Chéri, Colette topples conventional modes representation when the protagonist, an aging woman, contemplates the physical beauty of her young lover. This play with the role of the regard reveals a striking affirmation of female subjectivity. Colette’s female characters break with the long-standing model of the woman as “seen,” or “object.” Active in their sensuality, they are looking, distinctly subjects.
As these two examples demonstrate, love, marriage, and aging are central themes in Colette’s writing. She is preoccupied with the question: how can one be a woman in society and still be true to oneself? For Colette, in a world where romantic love is transient, where the reality of aging makes reliance on a youthful feminine esthetic impossible, it is writing that offers itself as the ultimate space for self expression and affirmation. Like her character René Néré, Colette teaches us that art can be a love affair in itself, a way to engage sensually with the world, to find an alternative to the ideal of conjugal union. Through these ruptures with tradition and proposals for new possibilities, Colette paved the way for new generations of 20th and 21st century female writers. Moreover, she challenged women to re-think their notions of femininity, and to look within themselves in order to define and carve out their places in society.