Abstract
Colette created intriguing and sympathetic portraits of Belle Époque demi-mondaines in three courtesan novels: Chéri (1920), La Fin de Chéri (1926), and Gigi (1944). Colette, who did not write from personal experience but rather out of sympathy for the courtesans with whom she socialized, explores the demi-mondaine’s life beyond prostitution and youth. Chéri continues—in the tradition of de Pougy’s Idylle—to counter the heterosexual norm. La Fin and Gigi however disrupt the remorseful and doomed tone of some of the courtesan novels. Colette’s three works ultimately mark a radical shift in perspective on the courtesan because they exhibit a complete departure from the stereotype of the self-sacrificing but doomed woman.
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Notes
- 1.
See Chap. 3 for a discussion of Idylle saphique.
- 2.
See Hughes’s discussion of Chéri and La Fin de Chéri, 149.
- 3.
Some critics celebrate the marriage as a Cinderella ending, while others, such as Susan D. Cohen, call it a “false fairy-tale ending,” since “this victory dooms Gigi to disappear beneath ‘Mme Lachaille,’ an improper name that signifies the property of another” (800). The debate would be a book in itself, but in any case, Gigi’s marriage is closer to de Chabrillan’s exit from prostitution through marriage than Nana’s or Marguerite Gautier’s.
- 4.
See the Pléiade volume that contains Chéri (1540).
- 5.
The “Notice” calls Chéri a novel about learning how to grow old (1541).
- 6.
The nontraditional love story also reflects Chéri as “un roman de l’éducation sentimentale” [a novel of sentimental education] (“Notice,” 1541).
- 7.
The “Notice” mentions Constant’s Adolphe and attributes the mature woman’s affair with a younger man to the “cruel consequences” of World War I (1543).
- 8.
See Applelbaum for all English translation of Chéri and Senhouse for the ones for La Fin.
- 9.
In Gigi, Colette’s last take on courtesans, the eponymous heroine finds herself limited in what she can wear, where she can go, and who she can see since her family wants to conserve her market value for the day she debuts as a demi-mondaine.
- 10.
While I agree with Hughes’s insightful reading, I do not think it precludes one from also reading the Chéri novels through the contestational lens of the courtesan novel.
- 11.
Thurman notes that the two characters “both realize that heroism takes many forms—and that even narcissists may achieve it” (“Introduction,” xxii).
- 12.
See Cohen for a more pessimistic reading of Gigi.
- 13.
Chalon has also noted the similarities, including the “hôtel particulier” [mansion], “les perles” [the pearls], the couple’s age difference, and the courtesan’s indulgence toward her “enfant gâté” [spoiled child] (173). Chalon asks: “C’est à se demander si Colette n’a pas recueilli, grâce à Natalie Barney, qui compte parmi ses proches amies, des détails très intimes sur le ménage Ghika pour composer son Chéri” [One wonders if Colette did not gather, thanks to Natalie Barney, one of her close friends, some very intimate details about the Ghika household when creating her Chéri] (173).
- 14.
The letter mentions that Deslandes calls the young duke “mon petit page” [my little page], but there is no mention of what he calls her. Moreover, since she already has the title of baroness, it is possible that Colette melds the stories of de Pougy and Deslandes (XXX).
- 15.
Hughes notes that Cheri’s “fatherless-upbringing which appears not to have taken him through that Œdipal psycho-sexual phrases […]” account for the “lack of a solid gender formation” which resulted due to his “blamable education” (151).
- 16.
Virginie Despentes’s contemporary account of her own experiences with prostitution describes the realities of frequently handling older clients with their physical imperfections and strange body odors. She notes, however, that the clients’ fragility and distress weigh on her the most (70).
- 17.
For “blunt case histories of a few Parisian prostitutes in the years 1906 to 1909,” see Feminisms of the Belle Époque (177–182). The histories describe how poverty and the attendant sicknesses that often accompany it such as consumption, “bad company,” and unwanted pregnancies at the hands of their “masters” are some of the reasons the women became prostitutes (180–181).
- 18.
See Chap. 3 for an analysis of the experience.
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Sullivan, C. (2016). Colette’s Courtesan Fiction: The Final Evolution. In: The Evolution of the French Courtesan Novel. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59709-0_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59709-0_5
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