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Available
Call number
Genres
Collection
Publication
Penguin Classics (1995), Paperback, 192 pages
Description
After a shattering marriage and divorce, Renee Nere is supporting herself as a music-hall artist and confronting the conflicting passions of sex, love, and career. One of the best, most passionate, funniest, saddest, and richly romantic of the great Colette's novels. She's timeless and a must read!
User reviews
LibraryThing member baswood
Colette does what she does best; she writes about love, but for her this was always synonymous with entrapment and this theme is fully explored in this wonderful novel.
It was published in 1911 and Colette wrote most of it while she was on the road with a dance and mime act. She wrote it backstage,
The vagabonde is Renee who has recently extricated herself from a tyrannical husband Adolphe Taillandy and has sought to earn her living on the stage while writing a novel when she can. Collete at this time had just left her husband Willy Gauthier-Villars and Taillandy is obviously based on him:
As far as I am concerned, the only genius he had was for lying. No woman, none of his women, could possibly have appraised and admired, feared and cursed his passion for lying as much as I did. Adolphe Taillandy used to lie feverishly, voluptuously, untiringly, almost involuntary. For him adultery was merely a type of falsehood, and by no means the most delectable.
Rennee in the novel attracts the attention of a rich admirer and when he comes backstage she treats him with disdain, his persistence pays off and she eventually thinks that she might be in love with her 'Big Noodle'. He offers her a life of ease and luxury, but she hesitates unwilling to give up her hard won independent life.
Colette writes beautifully breathing fire and passion into a story of love ,loss and fear of the future, without any trace of a cool Freudian analytical approach. She tells her would be lover;
I refuse to see the most beautiful countries of the world microscopically reflected in the amorous mirror of your eyes
Renee goes on tour with her mime and dance group and the novels climax is written as a series of letters exchanged between Renee and her 'Big Noodle' who stays behind in Paris. Colette writes some beautiful love letters which point subtly to the denouement of her novel. Fine writing indeed:
To speak the truth is one thing, but the whole truth that cannot , must not be said
I thoroughly enjoyed this marvellous book
It was published in 1911 and Colette wrote most of it while she was on the road with a dance and mime act. She wrote it backstage,
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on trains and in hotel rooms and the immediacy of the writing comes through by her use of the first person in her narrative. We feel the cold backstage dressing rooms, the cramped and poorly lit hotel rooms, the struggle for survival with her fellow artists, their wary camaraderie and battles with ill health. Colette like her heroine (Rennee) was obsessive about her backstage dressing room preparations which were interrupted by admirers and would be lovers.The vagabonde is Renee who has recently extricated herself from a tyrannical husband Adolphe Taillandy and has sought to earn her living on the stage while writing a novel when she can. Collete at this time had just left her husband Willy Gauthier-Villars and Taillandy is obviously based on him:
As far as I am concerned, the only genius he had was for lying. No woman, none of his women, could possibly have appraised and admired, feared and cursed his passion for lying as much as I did. Adolphe Taillandy used to lie feverishly, voluptuously, untiringly, almost involuntary. For him adultery was merely a type of falsehood, and by no means the most delectable.
Rennee in the novel attracts the attention of a rich admirer and when he comes backstage she treats him with disdain, his persistence pays off and she eventually thinks that she might be in love with her 'Big Noodle'. He offers her a life of ease and luxury, but she hesitates unwilling to give up her hard won independent life.
Colette writes beautifully breathing fire and passion into a story of love ,loss and fear of the future, without any trace of a cool Freudian analytical approach. She tells her would be lover;
I refuse to see the most beautiful countries of the world microscopically reflected in the amorous mirror of your eyes
Renee goes on tour with her mime and dance group and the novels climax is written as a series of letters exchanged between Renee and her 'Big Noodle' who stays behind in Paris. Colette writes some beautiful love letters which point subtly to the denouement of her novel. Fine writing indeed:
To speak the truth is one thing, but the whole truth that cannot , must not be said
I thoroughly enjoyed this marvellous book
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LibraryThing member devdev365
Autobiographical novel set in Paris music halls of the early 1900s. The vagabonde / wanderer protagonist moves toward social acceptance and romantic love for a while, only to reject the compromises an easy life offers, favoring instead a rigid self-honesty, an obscure sort of dignity that may be
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vanity, and perhaps, eventually, artistic engagement as a writer. The plot is almost the precise reverse of the conventional novel where loners find cover in the end, or die. Here, Colette creates a character still and always in the thick of it, lost yet grounded in her own emotional world, staring down everything with clear eyes. Show Less
LibraryThing member DieFledermaus
In Colette’s semi-autobiographical novel, the narrator, Renée Néré, has a past that is quite similar to the author’s – she is divorced from a controlling, cheating man, was a well-known writer in the past, and is currently making a living as an actress, mime, and dancer in a variety of
Although Renée’s somewhat aborted romance dominates the second half of the novel, at first Colette writes of the pleasures, stresses, and loneliness in her single life as a stage performer. The writing is light and fizzy, making even descriptions of empty rooms and cheap restaurants a delight. The narrator has lost most of her social circle after the divorce, but she has a few friends, whose irritating quirks are amusingly related. Her spoiled dog Fossette provides some companionship, but Renée does spend a lot of time unhappily enduring the single life. Although she gets along with her fellow performers, everyone keeps things light and shallow and they all know that their relationships are transient.
Maxime comes off rather stalker-ish – I didn’t like him and Renée is completely indifferent to him at first. She relates her horrible, suffocating life as a wife and it’s easy to see why she has avoided any romance. However, Colette does a good job of showing Renée’s change of heart, in the way that her formerly contemptuous descriptions of Maxime change. Still, there are plenty of signs that her feelings aren’t related to Maxime himself and that it won’t work. After all the talk of her isolation, it seems that she would be susceptible to anyone who was as persistent as he is. She also misses physical affection and sex, and some of her attraction to him is based on that. Maxime makes plenty of promises and declarations of love – it’s a pretty common way for people to be swept up into a relationship that they’re not looking for. He is a rather stolid and somewhat controlling type who is already making plans for marriage while Renée is still sorting out her feelings. They are separated when Renée leaves for her tour, and again, the description of the itinerant theater life (vagabonds, as she remarks) is interesting to read about. Much recommended.
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seedy theaters. Her life is lonely, but she has a kind of satisfaction at supporting herself. One day, Maxime walks into her dressing room, is kicked out, and doggedly pursues her. Renée is torn between her desire for love and her wounds from her marriage and desire for independence. While on a provincial tour, she goes back and forth over her love in a series of letters.Although Renée’s somewhat aborted romance dominates the second half of the novel, at first Colette writes of the pleasures, stresses, and loneliness in her single life as a stage performer. The writing is light and fizzy, making even descriptions of empty rooms and cheap restaurants a delight. The narrator has lost most of her social circle after the divorce, but she has a few friends, whose irritating quirks are amusingly related. Her spoiled dog Fossette provides some companionship, but Renée does spend a lot of time unhappily enduring the single life. Although she gets along with her fellow performers, everyone keeps things light and shallow and they all know that their relationships are transient.
Maxime comes off rather stalker-ish – I didn’t like him and Renée is completely indifferent to him at first. She relates her horrible, suffocating life as a wife and it’s easy to see why she has avoided any romance. However, Colette does a good job of showing Renée’s change of heart, in the way that her formerly contemptuous descriptions of Maxime change. Still, there are plenty of signs that her feelings aren’t related to Maxime himself and that it won’t work. After all the talk of her isolation, it seems that she would be susceptible to anyone who was as persistent as he is. She also misses physical affection and sex, and some of her attraction to him is based on that. Maxime makes plenty of promises and declarations of love – it’s a pretty common way for people to be swept up into a relationship that they’re not looking for. He is a rather stolid and somewhat controlling type who is already making plans for marriage while Renée is still sorting out her feelings. They are separated when Renée leaves for her tour, and again, the description of the itinerant theater life (vagabonds, as she remarks) is interesting to read about. Much recommended.
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LibraryThing member gbill
Colette based The Vagabond on her own life, the period when she turned to performing on the stage following her divorce from her first husband for his infidelities. She had already written the very popular Claudine series, but as they had been published under his name, she often had difficulty
In the story, her character Renee Nere is working as a 33-year-old dancer, and living alone in a seedy apartment building with other “ladies on their own”, including mistresses and ‘kept’ women. I loved Colette’s descriptions of the dingy dressing rooms at the various music halls, the bantering with fellow performers, and her putting up with the leering crowds as she slinked around in an Egyptian number that had her ending up in a sphinx position, propped up on her elbows (some photos of Colette herself exist in this pose). She was well aware that the compliments she received from men had nothing respectful about them, as they wanted “the same thing, always the same thing.” However, one well-to-do man falls for her in earnest, and begins courting her.
Renee has just been divorced after eight painful years of humiliation, including times when she was asked by her husband to leave their residence so that he could ‘entertain’ one of his other women. After leaving him, she was then subject to whispering and ridicule by those around her whose “most serious argument was: ‘What do you expect, my dear child!’”, and who commented “it’s only now that she’s thought of complaining?”. She has just found her feet on her own, has a healthy distrust for men, and has no interest in her admirer, even mocking him with the nickname “Big Noodle”. However, gradually she begins to soften, and before leaving on a 45-day tour around France, she realizes just how much he means to her. The big question, of course, is whether she will give up her single life and re-marry.
As Judith Thurman says in the introduction, the heroine of this novel “examines her addiction to men with amused detachment, and flirts, alternatively, with abstinence and temptation. Is there love without complete submission and loss of identity? Is freedom really worth the loneliness that pays for it? These are Colette’s abiding questions.” As Colette herself has Renee say in the novel, “there are days when solitude, for someone of my age, is a heady wine which intoxicates you with freedom, others when it is a bitter tonic, and still others when it is a poison which makes you beat your head against the wall.”
I enjoyed Colette’s writing, which seems very ‘French’, transporting me back to the Paris music halls at the beginning of the 20th century, as well as honest, dealing with conflicting feelings. While she didn’t consider herself a feminist, I find it has a strong, and very real, feminist message. Thumbs up for this one.
Quotes:
On her first husband, a ‘Don Juan’, and his charms on women:
“I met him, married him, lived with him for eight years … and what do I know of him? That he paints pastels and has mistresses. I know, too, that he achieves daily the disconcerting feat of being, for one person, a ‘plodder’ who thinks of nothing but his art; for one woman a seductive and unscrupulous ruffian; for another a fatherly lover who seasons a passing infatuation with a piquant flavour of incest; for still another the tired, disillusioned and aging artist seeking to adorn his autumn with a delicate idyll. There is even the woman for whom he is, quite simply, an unchartered libertine, still vigorous and as lecherous as could be desired; and finally there is the silly little goose, well brought up and deeply enamoured, whom Adolphe Taillandy taunts, torments, spurns and takes back again with all the literary cruelty of an ‘artist’ in an society novel.”
The chapter when her admirer and a friend take her into the country (leading to the admirer’s first kiss, somewhat bungled) is very well written. I loved this snippet:
“’It smells good,’ says the Big-Noodle suddenly, sniffing the air. ‘It smells like it does at home.’
I shook my head: ‘No, not like your home, like mine! Hamond, what does it smell like?’
‘It smells like autumn,’ says Hamond in a weary voice.
Whereupon we said no more and stood still, gazing up at a rivulet of sky imprisoned between very tall trees, and listening to the liquid call, clear and quavering, of a blackbird defying the winter, that came to us through the living, whispered murmur that rises from a forest.”
Lastly this erotic scene, when she finally does kiss him:
“Oh! … suddenly my mouth, in spite of itself, lets itself be opened, opens of itself as irresistibly as a ripe plum splits in the sun. And once again there is born that exacting pain that spreads from my lips, all down my flanks as far as my knees, that swelling as of a wound that wants to open once more and overflow – the voluptuous pleasure that I had forgotten.
I let the man who has awakened me drink the fruit he is pressing. My hands, stiff a moment ago, lie warm and soft in his, and my body, as I lie back, strives to mould itself to his.
…
Full of pride, my friend gathers me up in his arms as though I were a bunch of flowers, and half lays me on the divan where he rejoins me. His mouth tastes of mine now, and has the faint scent of my powder. Experienced as it is, I can feel that it is trying to invent something new, to vary the caress still further. But already I am bold enough to indicate my preference for a long, drowsy kiss that is almost motionless – the slow crushing, one against the other, of two flowers in which nothing vibrates but the palpitation of two coupled pistils.
…
Anxious to arrange my hair and see what my new face looks like, I took up the hand-mirror, and it makes me laugh to see we both have the same sleepy features, the same trembling, shiny, slightly swollen lips. Maxime has remained on the divan and his mute appeal receives the most flattering of responses: my look of a submissive bitch, rather shame-faced, rather cowed, very much petted, and ready to accept the leash, the collar, the place at her master’s feet, and everything.”
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making ends meet.In the story, her character Renee Nere is working as a 33-year-old dancer, and living alone in a seedy apartment building with other “ladies on their own”, including mistresses and ‘kept’ women. I loved Colette’s descriptions of the dingy dressing rooms at the various music halls, the bantering with fellow performers, and her putting up with the leering crowds as she slinked around in an Egyptian number that had her ending up in a sphinx position, propped up on her elbows (some photos of Colette herself exist in this pose). She was well aware that the compliments she received from men had nothing respectful about them, as they wanted “the same thing, always the same thing.” However, one well-to-do man falls for her in earnest, and begins courting her.
Renee has just been divorced after eight painful years of humiliation, including times when she was asked by her husband to leave their residence so that he could ‘entertain’ one of his other women. After leaving him, she was then subject to whispering and ridicule by those around her whose “most serious argument was: ‘What do you expect, my dear child!’”, and who commented “it’s only now that she’s thought of complaining?”. She has just found her feet on her own, has a healthy distrust for men, and has no interest in her admirer, even mocking him with the nickname “Big Noodle”. However, gradually she begins to soften, and before leaving on a 45-day tour around France, she realizes just how much he means to her. The big question, of course, is whether she will give up her single life and re-marry.
As Judith Thurman says in the introduction, the heroine of this novel “examines her addiction to men with amused detachment, and flirts, alternatively, with abstinence and temptation. Is there love without complete submission and loss of identity? Is freedom really worth the loneliness that pays for it? These are Colette’s abiding questions.” As Colette herself has Renee say in the novel, “there are days when solitude, for someone of my age, is a heady wine which intoxicates you with freedom, others when it is a bitter tonic, and still others when it is a poison which makes you beat your head against the wall.”
I enjoyed Colette’s writing, which seems very ‘French’, transporting me back to the Paris music halls at the beginning of the 20th century, as well as honest, dealing with conflicting feelings. While she didn’t consider herself a feminist, I find it has a strong, and very real, feminist message. Thumbs up for this one.
Quotes:
On her first husband, a ‘Don Juan’, and his charms on women:
“I met him, married him, lived with him for eight years … and what do I know of him? That he paints pastels and has mistresses. I know, too, that he achieves daily the disconcerting feat of being, for one person, a ‘plodder’ who thinks of nothing but his art; for one woman a seductive and unscrupulous ruffian; for another a fatherly lover who seasons a passing infatuation with a piquant flavour of incest; for still another the tired, disillusioned and aging artist seeking to adorn his autumn with a delicate idyll. There is even the woman for whom he is, quite simply, an unchartered libertine, still vigorous and as lecherous as could be desired; and finally there is the silly little goose, well brought up and deeply enamoured, whom Adolphe Taillandy taunts, torments, spurns and takes back again with all the literary cruelty of an ‘artist’ in an society novel.”
The chapter when her admirer and a friend take her into the country (leading to the admirer’s first kiss, somewhat bungled) is very well written. I loved this snippet:
“’It smells good,’ says the Big-Noodle suddenly, sniffing the air. ‘It smells like it does at home.’
I shook my head: ‘No, not like your home, like mine! Hamond, what does it smell like?’
‘It smells like autumn,’ says Hamond in a weary voice.
Whereupon we said no more and stood still, gazing up at a rivulet of sky imprisoned between very tall trees, and listening to the liquid call, clear and quavering, of a blackbird defying the winter, that came to us through the living, whispered murmur that rises from a forest.”
Lastly this erotic scene, when she finally does kiss him:
“Oh! … suddenly my mouth, in spite of itself, lets itself be opened, opens of itself as irresistibly as a ripe plum splits in the sun. And once again there is born that exacting pain that spreads from my lips, all down my flanks as far as my knees, that swelling as of a wound that wants to open once more and overflow – the voluptuous pleasure that I had forgotten.
I let the man who has awakened me drink the fruit he is pressing. My hands, stiff a moment ago, lie warm and soft in his, and my body, as I lie back, strives to mould itself to his.
…
Full of pride, my friend gathers me up in his arms as though I were a bunch of flowers, and half lays me on the divan where he rejoins me. His mouth tastes of mine now, and has the faint scent of my powder. Experienced as it is, I can feel that it is trying to invent something new, to vary the caress still further. But already I am bold enough to indicate my preference for a long, drowsy kiss that is almost motionless – the slow crushing, one against the other, of two flowers in which nothing vibrates but the palpitation of two coupled pistils.
…
Anxious to arrange my hair and see what my new face looks like, I took up the hand-mirror, and it makes me laugh to see we both have the same sleepy features, the same trembling, shiny, slightly swollen lips. Maxime has remained on the divan and his mute appeal receives the most flattering of responses: my look of a submissive bitch, rather shame-faced, rather cowed, very much petted, and ready to accept the leash, the collar, the place at her master’s feet, and everything.”
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LibraryThing member saloliver
Recommended to help you through loneliness and despair at the end of an affair.
LibraryThing member d.homsher
The story of an educated woman who makes her living as a performer in France and comes to love a gentle, wealthy, rather bland man ... but isn't sure she can stay with him.
Passionate and detailed story, related by a first-person narrator, a Frenchwoman in her thirties who has become accustomed to
Passionate and detailed story, related by a first-person narrator, a Frenchwoman in her thirties who has become accustomed to
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living out of a trunk, repairing her costumes, putting up with the rough usage of her dancing partner. Glimpses into dancehall life. Quick portraits of performers, many of them fragile and indestructible women. Bourgeois comforts and respectable marriage beckon ... the conclusion is inevitable, and wrenching. Show Less
LibraryThing member CBJames
Collete's The Vagabond tells a story of backstage life in the music halls of turn of the century Paris. The narrator/heroine has left a failed marriage and career as a novelist to earn a living performing two shows a night as an actress in French pantomime.
The Vagabond works as a backstage novel
With this in mind, I found The Vagabond ultimately disappointing. Collete is known for dealing with issues of love and sexuality, especially female sexuality, with a frankness that Americans see as French. It's a cliche in the U.S. to see the French, especially French artists like Colette, as more in-tune with an adult sensibility around sex than we are. I found Colette's novel Cheri to be a good example of this adult sexuality even though the title character is a teenager. So I was surprised to find much of The Vagabond adolescent:
Love, if you can; no doubt this will be granted you, so that at the summit of your poor happiness you may again remember that nothing counts, in love, except the first love, and endure at every moment the punishment of remembering, and the horror of comparing.
I was 22 when my first love came to an end. At that time I would have agreed with Colette whole-heartedly. 25 years later, it's tempting to roll my eyes a little in exasperation. Colette was 37 when she wrote The Vagabond. While the passage above is well written, I don't buy it. The love that lasts is the love that counts. Spend a decade or more with the one you love and you'll look back on that first love, remembering and comparing with no horror or punishment at all. Except maybe a moment or two spent wondering, "What was I thinking?"
While I had more problems with The Vagabond than the one outlined here, there is enough that's good in the novel to make it a worthwhile read. The peek at theatrical life, Colette's beautiful writing, the hints at autobiography all succeed in entertaining the reader. Those lucky enough to read it while in the throes of first love or in recovery from it will find a kindred spirit in Colette's The Vagabond.
Colette lived until 1954, so I figured there must be film footage of her. I could only find a little snippet from a 1951 documentary featuring an interview with Colette over breakfast in bed. Because the embed feature was disabled, you'll have to follow the link over to YouTube if you'd like to see it.
The Vagabond works as a backstage novel
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and as a source of insight into the its author, Colette. Because the narrator's biography shares so much with Colette's it's nearly impossible not to succumb to the temptation of committing the biographical fallacy. Since their back stories match, it's easy to conclude that the novel must be the story of Colette. With this in mind, I found The Vagabond ultimately disappointing. Collete is known for dealing with issues of love and sexuality, especially female sexuality, with a frankness that Americans see as French. It's a cliche in the U.S. to see the French, especially French artists like Colette, as more in-tune with an adult sensibility around sex than we are. I found Colette's novel Cheri to be a good example of this adult sexuality even though the title character is a teenager. So I was surprised to find much of The Vagabond adolescent:
Love, if you can; no doubt this will be granted you, so that at the summit of your poor happiness you may again remember that nothing counts, in love, except the first love, and endure at every moment the punishment of remembering, and the horror of comparing.
I was 22 when my first love came to an end. At that time I would have agreed with Colette whole-heartedly. 25 years later, it's tempting to roll my eyes a little in exasperation. Colette was 37 when she wrote The Vagabond. While the passage above is well written, I don't buy it. The love that lasts is the love that counts. Spend a decade or more with the one you love and you'll look back on that first love, remembering and comparing with no horror or punishment at all. Except maybe a moment or two spent wondering, "What was I thinking?"
While I had more problems with The Vagabond than the one outlined here, there is enough that's good in the novel to make it a worthwhile read. The peek at theatrical life, Colette's beautiful writing, the hints at autobiography all succeed in entertaining the reader. Those lucky enough to read it while in the throes of first love or in recovery from it will find a kindred spirit in Colette's The Vagabond.
Colette lived until 1954, so I figured there must be film footage of her. I could only find a little snippet from a 1951 documentary featuring an interview with Colette over breakfast in bed. Because the embed feature was disabled, you'll have to follow the link over to YouTube if you'd like to see it.
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LibraryThing member mjennings26
I have loved everything I've read by Colette. She's written so many books that I may never read them all, but what a nice problem to have. The first fifty pages of this book are absolute poetry, line by line.
LibraryThing member jolifanta
I really like Collette's writing in this book. It has received some negative reviews for an awkward translation, but I like it. It's very evocative of the narrator's personality.
Great book for getting a feel for what life as a woman in the underbelly of Paris was like in the early 20th century.
Great book for getting a feel for what life as a woman in the underbelly of Paris was like in the early 20th century.
LibraryThing member lucybrown
I do not as a rule re-read books. But when I do, I become thoroughly convinced that one never re-reads a book anymore than one steps into the same river twice. This is my third reading of Colette's The Vagabond. I like it even better this time. On this reading I was struck by the irony and humor,
Renée's difficulty in choosing between love and independence are heart rending. There are some who will say her choice was heartless. No she just didn't have the heart for it, that is for love. Her freedom has been hard won. A woman in 1910 did not up and leave her husband as easy as flipping a pancake. Nor was it an easy thing to begin alone and lonely,your connections with your former wholly life severed, in a new career. A career on the stage? I respect the honesty of her choice.
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plus Colette's understanding of the natural world and her genius for conveying its beauty stood out more than they had in previous readings. Renée's difficulty in choosing between love and independence are heart rending. There are some who will say her choice was heartless. No she just didn't have the heart for it, that is for love. Her freedom has been hard won. A woman in 1910 did not up and leave her husband as easy as flipping a pancake. Nor was it an easy thing to begin alone and lonely,your connections with your former wholly life severed, in a new career. A career on the stage? I respect the honesty of her choice.
Show Less
LibraryThing member lucybrown
I do not as a rule re-read books. But when I do, I become thoroughly convinced that one never re-reads a book anymore than one steps into the same river twice. This is my third reading of Colette's The Vagabond. I like it even better this time. On this reading I was struck by the irony and humor,
Renée's difficulty in choosing between love and independence are heart rending. There are some who will say her choice was heartless. No she just didn't have the heart for it, that is for love. Her freedom has been hard won. A woman in 1910 did not up and leave her husband as easy as flipping a pancake. Nor was it an easy thing to begin alone and lonely,your connections with your former wholly life severed, in a new career. A career on the stage? I respect the honesty of her choice.
Show More
plus Colette's understanding of the natural world and her genius for conveying its beauty stood out more than they had in previous readings. Renée's difficulty in choosing between love and independence are heart rending. There are some who will say her choice was heartless. No she just didn't have the heart for it, that is for love. Her freedom has been hard won. A woman in 1910 did not up and leave her husband as easy as flipping a pancake. Nor was it an easy thing to begin alone and lonely,your connections with your former wholly life severed, in a new career. A career on the stage? I respect the honesty of her choice.
Show Less
LibraryThing member lucybrown
I do not as a rule re-read books. But when I do, I become thoroughly convinced that one never re-reads a book anymore than one steps into the same river twice. This is my third reading of Colette's The Vagabond. I like it even better this time. On this reading I was struck by the irony and humor,
Renée's difficulty in choosing between love and independence are heart rending. There are some who will say her choice was heartless. No she just didn't have the heart for it, that is for love. Her freedom has been hard won. A woman in 1910 did not up and leave her husband as easy as flipping a pancake. Nor was it an easy thing to begin alone and lonely,your connections with your former wholly life severed, in a new career. A career on the stage? I respect the honesty of her choice.
Show More
plus Colette's understanding of the natural world and her genius for conveying its beauty stood out more than they had in previous readings. Renée's difficulty in choosing between love and independence are heart rending. There are some who will say her choice was heartless. No she just didn't have the heart for it, that is for love. Her freedom has been hard won. A woman in 1910 did not up and leave her husband as easy as flipping a pancake. Nor was it an easy thing to begin alone and lonely,your connections with your former wholly life severed, in a new career. A career on the stage? I respect the honesty of her choice.
Show Less
LibraryThing member Acia
This is the first book I read by Colette. I thought it was witty, inspiring, full of life and personality. One of my favorite sentences already towards the end, on page 211: ' Who is the full-mouthed ancestor who goes on barking inside me with a violence not only verbal but sentimental?'.
LibraryThing member Limelite
Talent, overwhelming talent allows Collette to completely take over the reader's mind and repossess it with the mind of Renee, a Parisian dance hall girl whose heart has been frozen to love's warmth by an early disastrous marriage. Published in 1910, this definitively feminist novel that extols the
In lyrical stream of consciousness, we experience an intensely intimate communication with Renee's thoughts and emotions as she reveals details of her home life, the sophisticated relationship she has with male friends in contrast to the maternal one her closest female friend has with her. Renee is a star of a touring performing troupe whose members offer nonjudgmental support to one another. In fact, the nonjudgmental natures universal to all the characters in this book is confirmation of the French character often mistakenly interpreted by some traveling Americans these days that the French are aloof, even rude when, in fact, they are politely disinterested.
Soon, the serene balance of the life Renee has maintained as a wall against the humiliation, pain, and disgust with herself for having married the wrong man out of love-blindness is overthrown when a handsome, youthful, and wealthy admirer seduces her with his sincere charm, innocent (of destructive forces of love), and true devotion introduces himself into her life. Renee is overcome with a roil of and becomes disoriented to her principles. Befuddled by the dread return of passion and, she believes, warped by the unworthiness of her love for Max, Renee, though determined to resist Max, is too beset and succumbs to love's force in a happy idyll.
When the performing company's manager comes to her with the announcement of a six-week tour, Renee vacillates between asking Max to come with her and denying him what he wants as well. Finally, reality and Renee's insecurities assert themselves and are reinforced by her imagination. Picturing upcoming nights in drab hotels, the boring confinement of long train rides, and horrified thoughts of how disenchanting her appearance will be to him when he sees her "en deshabille" she faces facts. For a woman who no longer feels young and made beautiful by love's glow, the imagined terrors are too much. She regretfully sets off alone.
It is these six weeks on tour that she wrestles with herself internally, and through letters she writes to Max, and over the ones he writes faithfully in return, she tries to resolve her conflict about which future life to choose. Will she trust in Max's love and believe she may have the capacity to again give herself in love for a lifetime, or will she return to her small set of rooms in Paris only to wrest herself out of her beloved's arms forever? There, in the dreary rain of a chilly dawn, the reviewer must regretfully depart her company.
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single life for women, regardless of its cost in loneliness and heartbreak, is the story of a poor, honest -- always brutally so to herself -- and profoundly introverted woman of courage that is exceptional for the age in which she lives.In lyrical stream of consciousness, we experience an intensely intimate communication with Renee's thoughts and emotions as she reveals details of her home life, the sophisticated relationship she has with male friends in contrast to the maternal one her closest female friend has with her. Renee is a star of a touring performing troupe whose members offer nonjudgmental support to one another. In fact, the nonjudgmental natures universal to all the characters in this book is confirmation of the French character often mistakenly interpreted by some traveling Americans these days that the French are aloof, even rude when, in fact, they are politely disinterested.
Soon, the serene balance of the life Renee has maintained as a wall against the humiliation, pain, and disgust with herself for having married the wrong man out of love-blindness is overthrown when a handsome, youthful, and wealthy admirer seduces her with his sincere charm, innocent (of destructive forces of love), and true devotion introduces himself into her life. Renee is overcome with a roil of and becomes disoriented to her principles. Befuddled by the dread return of passion and, she believes, warped by the unworthiness of her love for Max, Renee, though determined to resist Max, is too beset and succumbs to love's force in a happy idyll.
When the performing company's manager comes to her with the announcement of a six-week tour, Renee vacillates between asking Max to come with her and denying him what he wants as well. Finally, reality and Renee's insecurities assert themselves and are reinforced by her imagination. Picturing upcoming nights in drab hotels, the boring confinement of long train rides, and horrified thoughts of how disenchanting her appearance will be to him when he sees her "en deshabille" she faces facts. For a woman who no longer feels young and made beautiful by love's glow, the imagined terrors are too much. She regretfully sets off alone.
It is these six weeks on tour that she wrestles with herself internally, and through letters she writes to Max, and over the ones he writes faithfully in return, she tries to resolve her conflict about which future life to choose. Will she trust in Max's love and believe she may have the capacity to again give herself in love for a lifetime, or will she return to her small set of rooms in Paris only to wrest herself out of her beloved's arms forever? There, in the dreary rain of a chilly dawn, the reviewer must regretfully depart her company.
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Language
Original language
French
Original publication date
1910
Physical description
192 p.; 7.5 inches
ISBN
0140183256 / 9780140183252
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