Colette

Colette (French: [kɔ.lɛt]; Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, 28 January 1873 –

Colette
3 August 1954) was a French author and woman of letters nominated for the
Nobel Prize in Literaturein 1948; also known as a mime, actress, and journalist.
Colette was most widely known for her 1944 novella Gigi (1944), which was
the basis for the 1958 film and the 1973 stage productionof the same name.

Contents
Life and career
Family and background
Early years, 1873–1912
Writing career, 1920–1954
Last years, 1940–1954
Death
Legacy
Notable works
Filmography
Screenwriter
Films about Colette
Born Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette
28 January 1873
See also
Saint-Sauveur-en-
References Puisaye, Yonne, France
Citations
Died 3 August 1954 (aged 81)
Bibliography
Paris, France
Further reading
Occupation Novelist
External links
Nationality French

Signature
Life and career

Family and background

Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette was born on January 28, 1873, to war hero and tax
collector Jules-Joseph Colette and his wife Adèle Eugénie Sidonie ("Sido"), née
Landoy, in the village of Saint-Sauveur-en-Puisaye in the department of Yonne, Burgundy. The family was initially well off, but poor
financial management substantially reduced the family's income, and Colette attended a public school from the ages of 6 to 17. She
[1][2]
had a cousin, Genevieve, with whom she was particularly close.

Early years, 1873–1912

In 1893, Colette married Henry Gauthier-Villars (1859 – 1931), a well-known author and publisher who used the pen name
"Willy",[3] and her first four novels – the four Claudine stories: Claudine à l'École (1900), Claudine à Paris (1901), Claudine en
Ménage (1902), and Claudine S'en Va (1903) – appeared under his name. (The four are published in English as Claudine at School,
Claudine in Paris, Claudine Married, and Claudine and Annie). The novels chart the coming of age and young adulthood of their
titular heroine, Claudine, from an unconventional fifteen-year-old in a Burgundian village to a doyenne of the literary salons of turn-
of-the-century Paris. The story they tell is semi-autobiographical, but not entirely – most strikingly, Claudine, unlike Colette, is
motherless.[4][5]

Willy, fourteen years older than his wife and one of the most notorious libertines in Paris, introduced Colette into avant-garde
intellectual and artistic circles, engaged in sexual affairs, and encouraged Colette's lesbian alliances. It was he who chose the
titillating subject matter of the Claudine novels: "the secondary myth of Sappho... the girls' school or convent ruled by a seductive
female teacher". Colette later said that she would never have become a writer if it had not been for Willy.[6][7] Nevertheless, when
Colette wished to have her name associated with her work as it became widely known, Willy resisted and "locked her in her room
until she produced enough pages to suit him."[8]

Colette and Willy separated in 1906, although their divorce was not final until 1910. Colette had no access to the sizable earnings of
the Claudine books – the copyright belonged to Willy – and until 1912 she initiated a stage career in music halls across France,
sometimes playing Claudine in sketches from her own novels, earning barely enough to survive and often hungry and unwell. This
period of her life is recalled in La Vagabonde (1910), which deals with women's independence in a male society, a theme to which
she would regularly return in future works. During these years she embarked on a series of relationships with other women, notably
with Mathilde de Morny, the Marquise de Belbeuf ("Missy"), with whom she sometimes shared the stage. On January 3, 1907, an
onstage kiss between Missy and Colette in a pantomime entitled "Rêve d'Égypte," caused a near-riot, and as a result they were no
[9][10][11]
longer able to live together openly, although their relationship continued for another five years.

In 1912 Colette marriedHenry de Jouvenel, the editor of Le Matin. A daughter, Colette de Jouvenel, nicknamed Bel-Gazou, was born
to them in 1913. During World War I Colette devoted herself to journalism. The marriage allowed her to devote her time to
writing.[9][12][13]

Writing career, 1920–1954

In 1920 Colette published Chéri, portraying love between an older woman and a
much younger man. Chéri is the lover of Léa, a wealthy courtesan; Léa is devastated
when Chéri marries a girl his own age, and delighted when he returns to her, but
[14]
after one final night together she sends him away again.

Colette's marriage to Jouvenel ended in divorce in 1924, due partly to his infidelities
and partly to her affair with her 16-year-old stepson, Bertrand de Jouvenel. In 1925
she met Maurice Goudeket, who became her final husband; the couple stayed
together until her death.[9][12]

Colette was by then an established writer (The Vagabond had received three votes
for the prestigious Prix Goncourt). The decades of the 1920s and 1930s were her
most productive and innovative period.[15] Set mostly in Burgundy or Paris during
the Belle Époque, her work focused on married life and sexuality. It was frequently
quasi-autobiographical: Chéri (1920) and Le Blé en Herbe (1923) both deal with Colette, painted c. 1896 byJacques
love between an aging woman and a very young man, a situation reflecting her Humbert
relationship with Bertrand de Jouvenel and with her third husband Goudeket, who
was 16 years her junior.[12][9] La Naissance du Jour (1928) is her explicit criticism
of the conventional lives of women, expressed in a meditation on age and the renunciation of love by the character of her mother,
Sido.[16]

By this time Colette was frequently acclaimed as France's greatest woman writer. "It... has no plot, and yet tells of three lives all that
should be known", wrote Janet Flanner of Sido (1929). "Once again, and at greater length than usual, she has been hailed for her
genius, humanities and perfect prose by those literary journals which years ago... lifted nothing at all in her direction except the finger
of scorn."[17]
Last years, 1940–1954
Colette was 67 years old when the Germans defeated and occupied France, and she remained in Paris, in her apartment in the Palais
Royal. Her husband Maurice Goudeket, who was Jewish, was arrested by the Gestapo in December 1941, and although he was
released after a few months through the intervention of the French wife of the German ambassador, Colette lived through the rest of
the war years with the anxiety of a possible second arrest.[18][19] During the Occupation she produced two volumes of memoirs,
Journal à Rebours (1941) and De ma Fenêtre (1942; the two were issued in English in 1975 as Looking Backwards).[9] She wrote
articles for several pro-Nazi newspapers[20] and her novel Julie de Carneilhan (1941) contains many anti-Semitic slurs.[21]

In 1944 Colette published what became perhaps her most famous work, Gigi, which tells the story of sixteen-year-old Gilberte
("Gigi") Alvar. Born into a family of demimondaines, Gigi is trained as a courtesan to captivate a wealthy lover, but defies the
tradition by marrying him instead.[22] In 1949 it was made into a French film starring Danièle Delorme and Gaby Morlay, then in
1951 adapted for the stage with the then-unknown Audrey Hepburn in the title role, picked by Colette personally; the 1958
Hollywood musical movie, starringLeslie Caron and Louis Jourdan, with a screenplay by Alan Jay Lerner and a score by Lerner and
Frederick Loewe, won the Academy Award for Best Picture.

In the postwar years, Colette became a famous public figure, crippled by arthritis and cared for by Goudeket, who supervised the
preparation of her Œuvres Complètes (1948 – 1950). She continued to write during those years, bringing out L'Etoile Vesper (1944)
and Le Fanal Bleu (1949), in which she reflected on the problems of a writer whose inspiration is primarily autobiographical. She
was nominated by Claude Farrère for the Nobel Prize in Literaturein 1948.[23]

Death
On her death on August 3, 1954, she was refused a religious funeral by the Catholic Church on account of her divorces, but given a
state funeral, the first French woman of letters to be granted the honour, and interred in Père-Lachaise cemetery.[18][19][9][24]

Legacy
Colette was elected to the Belgian Royal Academy (1935), the Académie Goncourt
(1945, and President in 1949), and a Chevalier (1920) and Grand Officer (1953) of
the Légion d'honneur.[13]

Colette's numerous biographers have proposed widely dif

fering interpretations of her
life and work over the decades.[25] Initially considered a limited if talented novelist
(despite the outspoken admiration in her lifetime of figures such as André Gide and
Henry de Montherlant), she has been increasingly recognised as an important voice
in women's writing.[9] Just before Colette's death, Katherine Anne Porter wrote in
the New York Times that Colette "is the greatest living French writer of fiction; and Colette's tomb in Père Lachaise
that she was while Gide and Proust still lived."[26] Cemetery.

Singer-songwriter Rosanne Cash paid tribute to the writer in the song, "The Summer
I Read Colette," on her 1996 album10 Song Demo.[27]

[28]
Truman Capote wrote a short story about her in 1970 called "The White Rose."

"Lucette Stranded on the Island" by Julia Holter, from her 2015 album Have You in My Wilderness, is based on a minor character
from Colette's short storyChance Acquaintances.[29]

In the 1991 film Becoming Colette, Colette is played by the French actress Mathilda May. In the 2018 film Colette, the title character
is played by Keira Knightley.[30] Both films focus on Colette's life in her twenties, her marriage to her first husband, and the
publication of her first novels under his name.
Notable works
Claudine à l'école (1900, translated as Claudine at School)
Claudine à Paris (1901)
Claudine en ménage (1902, translated as Claudine Married)
Claudine s'en va (1903, translated as Claudine and Annie)
Dialogues de Bêtes (1904)
La Retraite Sentimentale(1907)
Les Vrilles de la vigne (1908)
La Vagabonde (1910)
L'Envers du music hall (1913)
L'Entrave (1913, translated as The Shackle)
La Paix Chez les Bêtes(1916)
L'Enfant et les sortilèges(1917, Ravel opera libretto)
Mitsou (1919)
Chéri (1920)
La Maison de Claudine(1922, translated as The House of Claudine)
L'Autre Femme (1922, translated as The Other Woman)
Le Blé en herbe (1923, translated as Ripening Seed)
La Fin de Chéri (1926, translated as The Last of Chéri)
La Naissance du jour (1928, translated as Break of Day)
Sido (1929)
La Seconde (1929, translated as The Other One)
Le Pur et L'Impur (1932, translated as The Pure and the Impure)
La Chatte (1933)
Duo (1934)
Julie de Carneilhan (1941)
Le Képi (1943)
Gigi (1944)
L'Étoile Vesper (1947)
Le Fanal Bleu (1949, translated as The Blue Lantern)
Paradis terrestre, with photographs by Izis Bidermanas (1953)
Source:[31]

Filmography
La Vagabonde, directed by Solange Térac (France, 1932, based on the novelThe Vagabond)
Claudine à l'école, directed by Serge de Poligny (France, 1937, based on the novelClaudine at School)
Gigi, directed by Jacqueline Audry (France, 1949, based on the novellaGigi)
Julie de Carneilhan, directed by Jacques Manuel (France, 1950, based on the novelJulie de Carneilhan)
Minne, l'ingénue libertine, directed by Jacqueline Audry (France, 1950, based on the novelL'Ingénue libertine)
Chéri, directed by Pierre Billon (France, 1950, based on the novelChéri)
Le Blé en herbe, directed by Claude Autant-Lara (France, 1954, based on the novelGreen Wheat)
Mitsou, directed by Jacqueline Audry (France, 1956, based on the novellaMitsou)
NBC Matinee Theater: The Vagabond (1958, TV series episode, based on the novelThe Vagabond)
Gigi, directed by Vincente Minnelli (1958, based on the novellaGigi)
Chéri, directed by François Chatel (France, 1962, TV film, based on the novelChéri)
The Gentle Libertine or How Young Girls Grow Wise, directed by Robert Kitts (UK, 1967, TV film, based on the novel
L'Ingénue libertine)
Away from It All: The Ripening Seed, directed by Mischa Scorer (UK, 1973, TV series episode, based on the novel
Green Wheat)
Chéri, directed by Claude Whatham (UK, 1973, TV miniseries, based on the novelChéri)
La Seconde, directed by Hervé Bromberger (France, 1973, TV film, based on the novelLa Seconde)
Claudine, directed by Édouard Molinaro (France, 1978, TV miniseries, based on theClaudine novels)
 La Naissance du jour, directed by Jacques Demy (France, 1980, TV film, based on the novelBreak of Day)
Emmenez-moi au théâtre: Chéri, directed by Yves-André Hubert (France, 1984, TV series episode, based on the
novel Chéri)
Gigi, directed by Jeannette Hubert (France, 1987, TV film, based on the novella Gigi)
Julie de Carneilhan, directed by Christopher Frank (France, 1990, TV film, based on the novelJulie de Carneilhan)
Le Blé en herbe, directed by Serge Meynard (France, 1990, TV film, based on the novel Green Wheat)
La Seconde, directed by Christopher Frank (France, 1990, TV film, based on the novelLa Seconde)
Duo, directed by Claude Santelli (France, 1990, TV film, based on the novelDuo)
Bella Vista, directed by Alfredo Arias (France, 1992, TV film, based on the short storyBella-Vista)
Mademoiselle Gigi, directed by Caroline Huppert (France, 2006, TV film, based on the novellaGigi)
Chéri, directed by Stephen Frears (UK, 2009, based on the novelChéri)

Screenwriter
1934: Lake of Ladies (dir. Marc Allégret)
1935: Divine (dir. Max Ophüls)

Films about Colette

Colette, directed by Yannick Bellon (France, 1952, short documentary)
Becoming Colette, directed by Danny Huston (1991), with Mathilda May as Colette
Colette, une femme libre, directed by Nadine Trintignant (France, 2004, TV film), withMarie Trintignant as Colette
Colette, directed by Wash Westmoreland (2018), with Keira Knightley as Colette

See also
Le Monde's 100 Books of the Century, a list which includes Les Vrilles de la vigne
Mononymous persons

References

Citations
1. Tilburg 2008, p. 78.
2. Portuges & Jouve 1999, p. 79.
3. Koski, Lorna (27 December 2013)."Book Tells Story of Colette's France"(http://www.wwd.com/eye/people/book-tells
-story-of-colettes-france-7264395?src=nl/wkEye/20140103). WWD. Retrieved 3 January 2014.
4. Southworth 2004, pp. 111–112.
5. Flower 2013, p. 78.
6. Ladimer 1999, pp. 51–53.
7. Portuges & Jouve 1994, p. 79.
8. "8 Fascinating Facts About Bisexual Legend Colette That oYu Should Know Before Keira Knightly's Biopic"(https://w
ww.autostraddle.com/8-fascinating-facts-about-bisexual-legend-colette-that-you-should-know-before-keira-knightlys-
biopic-426889/). Autostraddle. 24 July 2018. Retrieved 31 July 2018.
9. Flower 2013, p. 145.
10. Rodriguez 2002, p. 131.
11. Benstock 1986, pp. 48–49.
12. Portuges & Jouves 1994, p. 80.
13. Cottrell 1991, p. 262.
14. Jouves 1987, p. 109–111.
15. Ladimer 1999, p. 57.
16. Ladimer 1999, p. 57–58.
17. Flanner 1972, p. 70.
18. Portuges & Jouve 1994, pp. 80–81.
19. Rosbottom 2014, p. unpaginated.
20. "Terry Castle Reviews Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Coletteby Judith Thurman" (https://www.lrb.co.uk/v22/n06/terry
-castle/yes-you-sweetheart). London Review of Books. 16 March 2000. Retrieved 17 January 2019.
21. "Wild, controversial and free: Colette, a life too big for film"(https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jan/07/colette-f
rench-novelist-movie-keira-knightley). The Guardian. 7 January 2019. Retrieved 17 January 2019.
22. Snodgrass 2015b, p. unpaginated.
23. "Sidonie Gabrielle Colette in the Nomination Database"(https://www.nobelprize.org/nomination/redirector/?redir=arc
hive/show_people.php&id=1883). The official website of the Nobel Prize - NobelPrize.org
. Retrieved 24 September
2018.
24. Wilson, Scott. Resting Places: The Burial Sites of More Than 14,000 Famous Persons
, 3rd ed.: 2 (Kindle Locations
9128–9129). McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers. Kindle Edition
25. "Claudine All Grown Up"(https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/00/02/27/reviews/000227.27decourt.
html). archive.nytimes.com. Retrieved 31 July 2018.
26. "A Most Lively Genius"(https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/99/10/17/specials/colette-novels.html)
.
archive.nytimes.com. Retrieved 31 July 2018.
27. Dana Andrew Jennings (7 April 1996),"POP MUSIC; Songwriters Who Followed Their Literary Muses"(https://www.
nytimes.com/1996/04/07/books/pop-music-songwriters-who-followed-their-literary-muses.html)
, The New York Times
28. Capote, Truman (2007). Portraits and Observations: The Essays of T
ruman Capote (https://www.penguinrandomhou
se.com/books/23734/portraits-and-observations-by-truman-capote/9780812994391/) . Random House. p. 368.
ISBN 9780812994391.
29. " 'There's Always A Piece Of Me': Julia Holter On Storytelling"(https://www.npr.org/2015/09/21/442197547/theres-al
ways-a-piece-of-me-julia-holter-on-storytelling)
. NPR.org. NPR. Retrieved 20 October 2016.
30. Hoffman, Jordan (22 January 2018)."Colette review – Keira Knightley is on top form in exhilarating literary biopic"(ht
tps://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/jan/22/colette-review-keira-knightley-is-on-top-form-in-exhilarating-literary-biopi
c). The Guardian. London. Retrieved 27 January 2018.
31. Norell, Donna M. (1993).Colette: An Annotated Primary and Secondary Bibliography(https://books.google.com/boo
ks?id=GnRxQgAACAAJ). Garland Reference Library of the Humanities. Routledge.ISBN 9780824066208.

Bibliography
Benstock, Shari (1986).Women of the Left Bank: Paris, 1900–1940. University of Texas Press.
Cottrell, Robert D. (1991). "Colette".In Wilson, Katharina M.An Encyclopedia of Continental Women Writers . 1.
Taylor & Francis.
Flanner, Janet (1972). Paris was Yesterday. Viking.
Flower, John (2013). Historical Dictionary of French Literature. Scarecrow Press.
Hennigfeld, Ursula/ Hörner, Fernand/ Link-Heer, Ursula (2006). Literarische Gendertheorie. Eros und Gesellschaft
bei Proust und Colette. Bielefeld, Transcript.
Jouve, Nicole Ward (1987). Colette. Indiana University Press.
Ladimer, Bethany (1999). Colette, Beauvoir, and Duras: Age and Women Writers. University Press of Florida.
Portuges, Catherine; Jouve, Nicole Ward (1994). "Colette". In Sartori, Eva Martin; Zimmerman, Dorothy W ynne.
French Women Writers. University of Nebraska Press.
Rodriguez, Suzanne (2002).Wild Heart: Natalie Clifford Barney and the Decadence of Literary Paris . Harper Collins.
Rosbottom, Ronald (2014).When Paris Went Dark. Hachette.
Sharland, Elizabeth (2005).A Theatrical Feast in Paris: From Moliere to Deneuve . iUniverse.
Smith, Richard Candida (1999).Mallarme's Children: Symbolism and the Renewal of Experience . University of
California Press.
Snodgrass, Mary Ellen (2015a). "Colette".In Snodgrass, Mary Ellen.Encyclopedia of Feminist Literature. Infobase
Learning.
Snodgrass, Mary Ellen (2015b). "Gigi".In Snodgrass, Mary Ellen.Encyclopedia of Feminist Literature. Infobase
Learning.
 Southworth, Helen (2004).The Intersecting Realities and Fictions of Virginia Woolf and Colette. Ohio State
University Press.
Taylor, Karen L. (2006). The Facts on File Companion to the French Novel . Infobase Publishing.
Tilburg, Patricia (2008). "Colette".In Granata, Cora Ann; Koos, Cheryl A.The Human Tradition in Modern Europe,
1750 to the Present. Rowman & Littlefield.

Further reading
Colette: Autograph letters, signed (6): Paris; Manoir de Rozven par S. Coulomb, Ille-et-Vilaine; and [n.p.], to D. E.
Inghelbrecht and Colette Inghelbrecht, 1909–1948 and n.d. are housed at the Pierpont Morgan Library.
Sylvain Bonmariage, Willy, Colette et moi, with an introduction byJean-Pierre Thiollet, Anagramme ed., Paris, 2004
(reprint)
Joanna Richardson, Colette, Methuen, London, 1983
Judith Thurman, Secrets of the flesh : a life of Colette, Bloomsbury, London, 1999
Petri Liukkonen. "Colette". Books and Writers

External links
Centre d'études Colette(in French)
Works by Colette at Project Gutenberg
Works by or about Coletteat Internet Archive
Works by Colette at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
Portrait of Colette, by Irving Penn (commentary on portrait)
Short Profile of Colette(in English)
Colette and her Cats

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