Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette
Born	(1873-01-28)28 January 1873 Yonne, France
Died	3 August 1954(1954-08-03) (aged 81) Paris, France
Pen name	Colette
Occupation	Novelist
Nationality	French
Signature

Colette (pronounced: [kɔ.lɛt]) was the surname of the French novelist and performer Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (28 January 1873 – 3 August 1954). She is best known for her novel Gigi, upon which Lerner and Loewe based the stage and film musical comedies of the same title.

Early life and marriage [link]

Colette was born to retired military officer Jules-Joseph Colette and his wife Adèle Eugénie Sidonie "Sido" Colette (nėe Landoy) in Saint-Sauveur-en-Puisaye, Yonne, in the Burgundy Region of France. She studied piano as a child and received her primary school diploma with high marks in mathematics and dictation.^[1] In 1893, at age 20, she married Henry Gauthier-Villars, a famous wit known as "Willy", who was 15 years her senior. He was a writer, music critic, and described as a "literary charlatan and degenerate".^[2]

Her first books, the Claudine series, were published under her husband's pen name "Willy". Claudine still has the power to charm; in belle epoque France it was downright shocking, much to Willy's satisfaction and profit.

Music hall career, affairs with women [link]

In 1906, she left the unfaithful Gauthier-Villars, living for a time at the home of the American writer and salonist Natalie Clifford Barney. The two had a short affair, and remained friends until Colette's death.^[3] She was also, according to author Jean-Claude Baker’s book Josephine: The Hungry Heart, involved for some time with actress Josephine Baker.^[4]

Colette went to work in the music halls of Paris, under the wing of Mathilde de Morny, Marquise de Belbeuf, known as Missy, with whom she became romantically involved. In 1907, the two performed together in a pantomime entitled Rêve d'Égypte at the Moulin Rouge. Their onstage kiss nearly caused a riot, which the police were called in to suppress. As a result of this scandal, further performances of Rêve d'Égypte were banned, and Colette and de Morny were no longer able to openly live together, though their relationship continued for five years.^[5] She also was involved in a heterosexual relationship during this time, with the Italian writer Gabriele d'Annunzio. Another affair during this period was with the automobile-empire scion Auguste Heriot.

Second marriage, affair with stepson [link]

In 1912, Colette married Henri de Jouvenel, the editor of the newspaper Le Matin. The couple had one daughter, Colette de Jouvenel, known to the family as Bel-Gazou. Colette de Jouvenel later stated that her mother did not want a child and left her in the care of an English nanny, only rarely visiting her.

In 1914, during World War I, Colette was approached to write a ballet for the Paris Opera, which she outlined under the title "Divertissements pour ma fille". After Colette herself chose Maurice Ravel to write the music, he reimagined the work as an opera, to which Colette agreed. Ravel received the libretto to L'enfant et les sortilèges in 1918, and it was first performed on 21 March 1925.^[6]

During the war, she converted her husband's Saint-Malo estate into a hospital for the wounded, and was made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour (1920). She divorced Henri de Jouvenel in 1924 after a much talked-about affair with her stepson, Bertrand de Jouvenel.

Third marriage [link]

Colette, painted ca. 1896 by Jacques Humbert

In 1935, Colette married Maurice Goudeket, an uncle of Juliet Goudeket alias Jetta Goudal.^[7] After 1935, her legal name was simply Sidonie Goudeket. Maurice Goudeket published a book about his wife, Close to Colette: An Intimate Portrait of a Woman of Genius. An English translation was published in 1957 by Farrar, Straus & Cudahy, New York.

Continued writings [link]

Post-war, her writing career bloomed following the publication of Chéri (1920). Chéri tells a story of the end of a six-year affair between an aging retired courtesan, Léa, and a pampered young man, Chéri. Turning stereotypes upside-down, it is Chéri who wears silk pajamas and Léa's pearls, and who is the object of gaze.^{[clarification needed]} In the end, Léa demonstrates all the survival skills which Colette associates with femininity. (The story continued in La Fin de Chéri (1926), which contrasts Léa's strength and Chéri's fragility and decline.) Considered nowadays to be Colette's masterpiece, Chéri was originally met with controversy because of its choice of setting - the demimonde of the Parisian courtesans - and also because of its portrayal of the hedonistic Chéri.

After Chéri, Colette entered the world of modern poetry and painting revolving around Jean Cocteau, who was later her neighbor in Jardins du Palais-Royal. Their relationship and life is vividly depicted in their books. By 1927, she 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 on its publication in 1930. "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."

She spent her final years in a wheelchair, being cared for by Goudeket, whom she called "a saint". In 1951 she attended the premiere of a documentary about her life, and at the end she was heard saying to Goudeket, "What a beautiful life I've had".

Upon her death in Paris in 1954, Colette left 50 published novels in total, many with autobiographical elements. Her themes can be roughly divided into idyllic natural tales or dark struggles in relationships and love. All her novels were marked by clever observation and dialogue with an intimate, explicit style. Her popular novel Gigi was made into a Broadway play and a highly successful Hollywood motion picture of the same name, starring Leslie Caron, Louis Jourdan and Maurice Chevalier. In 2009, an adaptation by Christopher Hampton of both Chéri and La Fin de Chéri was made into a film starring Michelle Pfeiffer, Rupert Friend and Kathy Bates and directed by Stephen Frears.

Legacy [link]

A controversial figure throughout her life, Colette flaunted her lesbian affairs.

She was a member of the Belgian Royal Academy (1935), president of the Académie Goncourt (1949) (and the first woman to be admitted into it, in 1945), and a Chevalier (1920) and a Grand Officier (1953) of the Légion d'honneur.

During the German occupation of France during World War II, she aided her Jewish friends, including hiding her husband in her attic all through the war. When she died in Paris on 3 August 1954, she was the first woman given a state funeral in France, although she was refused Roman Catholic rites because of her divorces. Colette is interred in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.

Singer-songwriter Rosanne Cash paid tribute to the writer in the song, "The Summer I Read Colette", on her 1996 album 10 Song Demo.

Colette's tomb in Père Lachaise Cemetery.

Notable works [link]

• Claudine à l'école (1900)
• Claudine à Paris (1901)
• Claudine en ménage (1902)
• Claudine s'en va (1903)
• Dialogues de Bêtes (1904)
• La Retraite Sentimentale (1907)
• Les Vrilles de la vigne (1908)
• La Vagabonde (1910)
• L'Envers du music hall (1913)
• La Paix Chez les Bêtes (1916)
• L'enfant et les sortilèges (1917, Ravel opera libretto)
• Mitsou (1919)
• Chéri (1920)
• La Maison de Claudine (1922)
• Le Blé en herbe (1923)
• La Fin de Chéri (1926)
• La Naissance du Jour (1928) (translated as Break of Day)
• Sido (1929)
• Le Pur et L'Impur (1932)
• La Chatte (1933)
• Duo (1934)
• Le Képi (1943)
• Gigi (1945)
• L'Étoile Vesper (1947)
• Le Fanal Bleu (1949)
• Paradis terrestre, with photographs by Izis Bidermanas (1953)

See also [link]

Novels portal

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

Biography [link]

• Sylvain Bonmariage, Willy, Colette et moi, with an introduction by Jean-Pierre Thiollet, Anagramme ed., Paris, 2004 (reprint)
• Joanna Richardson, Colette, Methuen, London, 1983

References [link]

External links [link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Colette

• (French) Centre d'études Colette
• Works by Colette at Project Gutenberg
• Source for some material used in this article
• Image of Colette
• Portrait of Colette, by Irving Penn (commentary on portrait)
• (English) Short Profile of Colette