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 French
writer, belonging, in time, to the generation of writers that includes
Marcel Proust, Paul Valéry, André Gide, and Paul Claudel. Colette's
main themes were pleasures and pains of love, female sexuality and
disappointing world of men. All her works are more or less autobiographical.
She wrote over 50 novels and scores of short stories. Most of Colette's
heroes and heroines exist on the margins of society.
"By means of an image we are often able to hold on to our
lost belongings. But it is the desperateness of losing which picks
the flowers of memory, binds the bouquet."
(Mes Apprentissages, 1936)
Colette was born in the Burgundian village of Saint-Sauveur-en
Puisaye as the daughter of a retired army captain, who worked as
a tax collector with local political aspirations. Her mother, also
named 'Sidonie' or 'Sido', was an unconventional character, a down-to-earth
mother, devoted to her pets, books and garden. She spent a happy
childhood in rural surrounding, which later was the scene of her
many novels. At the age of 20 Colette married 15 years older writer
and critic Henri Gauthier-Villars, ('Monsieur Willy'), a Parisian
music critic and author.
 Encouraged
to start a career as a writer Colette published in short period
four CLAUDINE novels (1900-03) under her husband's pen name Willy.
The series of four novels depicted a teenage girl's improper adventures.
Tired of her husband's unfaithfulness and 'depressing house' she
broke free of him in 1905. After divorce in 1906 Colette became
music-hall performer at such places as La Chatte Amoureuse and L'Oiseau
de Nuit. She also had a protector, a woman known as 'Missy' who
managed her public image, as writer, as actress and as lesbian.
In 1912 Colette married Henri de Jouvenel des Ursins, editor of
the newspaper Le Matin, in which Colette published theatre chronicles
and short stories.
In 1910 Colette published LA VAGABONDE, depicting an actress who
rejects a man she loves in order to pursue her own lonely and independent
way. During World War I Colette converted her husband's St. Malo
estate into a hospital for the wounded and was made after the was
a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour (1920).
The 1920s brought Colette enormous fame. She entered the world
of modern poetry and paintings, which centered around Jean Cocteau,
who was later her neighbour in Palais Royale. The relationship and
life is vividly depicted in their books. By 1927 she was frequently
acclaimed as France's greatest woman writer. Colette's insights
into the behaviour of women in love gained a sympathetic response
from the reading public.
"'The great hat principle is that when you meet a woman on
the street and her hat allows you to see whether she's a brunette,
a blonde, or a redhead, the woman in question is not wearing a
chic hat. There! ... Notice I'm not saying anything; I'll let
you make up your own mind. Well?'"
(from 'The Saleswoman' in Collected Stories)
 In
Colette's mature works two broad themes can be identified: Colette
depicts peaceful world, the nature and the mother-daughter bond
among others in LA MAISON DE CLAUDINE (1922), which mythologized
her childhood, LA NAISSANCE DU JOUR (1928) and SIDO (1929), which
celebrates Colette's carefree rural childhood, and the strength
of her mother. Novels such as LA VAGABONDE (1911), CHÉRI (1920),
LE BLÉ EN HERBE (1923), LA SECONDE (1929) and LA CHATTE she explores
a darker universe, struggle between independent identity and passionate
love. Chéri, which is one of her most famous book, tells
a story of the end of a six-year affair between middle-age woman,
Léa, and a young man, Chéri. Turning stereotypes upside-down it
is Chéri who wears silk pyjamas and Léa's pearls, he is the object
of gaze. And in the end Léa demonstrates all the survival skills
with Colette associates with feminity. The story continued in The
Last of Chéri (1951), which contrasts Léa's strength and Chéri's
fragility, leading to his suicide.
In the 1940s Colette depicted her existence in old age, in L'ÉTOILE
VESPER (1946) and LE FANAL BLEU (1949). Her use of the character/narrator
'Colette' added with fictional and real characters constantly questions
the relationship between autobiography and fiction. GIGI (1945)
was published when the author was 72; the novel was made into a
film in 1958.
 In
the 1930s Colette was made a member of the Belgian Royal Academy.
She was the first woman to be admitted to France's Académie Goncourt.
In 1953 she became a grand officer of the Legion of Honour. She
won also many awards for her work, and became a legendary figure
in Paris as writer Gertrude Stein (1874-1946). During the last 20
years of her life Colette suffered crippling form of arthritis,
which had been set off by the fracture of a fibula in 1931. Her
marriage 1924 with Henry de Jouvenal ended in 1924. From 1935 she
was married to the journalist Maurice Goudaket. Colette died on
August 3, 1954 in Paris. She was accorded a state funeral despite
the refusal of Catholic rites on the grounds that she had been divorced.
Her funeral was attended by thousands of mourners.
Other writers closely associated with Paris: Victor Hugo
(The Hunchback of Notre-Dame), Gaston Leroux (The Phantom of the
Opera), Alexandre Dumas (père), Honoré de Balzac, Eugéne Sue,
Charles Baudelaire, Guillaume Apollinaire, Émile Zola, Ernest
Hemingway, Jean-Paul Sartre, etc.
For further reading: Madame Colette by M. Crosland (1953);
Prés de Colette (Close to Colette) by Maurice Goudeket (1955);
Colette by E. Marks (1960); The Delights of Growing Old by Maurice
Goudeket (1966); Colette - The Difficulty of Loving by M. Crosland
(1973); Colette by R.D. Cotrell (1974); Colette by Y. Mitchell
(1975); Colette Free and Fettered by M. Sarde (1980); Colette,
ed. by E.M. Eisinger and M.W.McCarthy (1981); Colette by J.H.
Stewart (1983); Colette by J. Richardson (1984); Colette by N.
Ward Jouve (1987); Colette: A Life by H. Lottman (1990); Creating
Colette: From Ingenue to Libertine 1873-1913 by Claude Francis,
Fernande Gontier ( 1998) ; Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette
by Judith Thurman (1999); Creating Colette: From Baroness to Woman
of Letters, 1912-1954 by Claude Francis, Fernande Gontier (1999)
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