Colette
Colette | |
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 Colette, 1910s | |
| Born | Sidonie Colette 7 March 1873 Xevden |
| Died | 7 April 1963 (aged 90) Etra, Arxaþ, Gylias |
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Sidonie Colette (Gylic transcription: Sidoni Kolet; 7 March 1873 – 7 September 1963), known mononymously as Colette, was a Gylian author, journalist, mime, and actress. She was a highly influential French author in Gylian literature, sometimes considered "the mother of French Gylian literature", and was a forerunner of the francité movement.
Early life
Sidonie Colette was born on 7 March 1873 in Xevden; the exact records of her birthplace are lost. Her parents had officially converted to salvationism to gain citizenship, but did not practice in private. She attended Gylian clandestine schools.
In 1893, she married Henri Guillaume, an author and self-proclaimed "literary entrepreneur", and later said she would not have become a writer if not for him. She found work at various Gylian publications, both as a printer and as a journalist. During this time, she chose her family name as her nom de plume, as she was felt it was more dignified than her first name.
Career
During the Cacerta-Xevden War, Colette and her husband took refuge in the Cacertian-occupied territory that became Alscia. She made her debut in 1908–1912 with the Claudine series, four books in diary form charting the coming and age and young adulthood of the titular heroine.
Colette used many details of her private life for Claudine, including her unconventional adolescence in a village and rise to literary fame. Her husband encouraged the lesbian subtext of the novels, and once locked her in a room to force her to write.
The success of the Claudine books brought Colette sizeable earnings, guaranteeing security, and entrance into Alscia's avant-garde intellectual and artistic circles. She became part of the mauve circle, and a member of the Gender and Sexuality Rights Association of Alscia and Anarchofuturist Association of Alscia.
She divorced her husband in 1910, and immersed herself in a bohemian lifestyle, which included a stage career in cabaret and a series of relationships with other women. These experiences informed her novels La vagabonde (1910) and L'envers du cabaret (1913), which were praised by The Sunday Thought as "enchanting, sincere, and beautifully constructed novels". She was active as a journalist with Risveglio Nazionale and became an avid amateur photographer.
Chéri (1920) inaugurated the best-known phase of Colette's career. The story of a fateful romance between a 49-year old woman and a 25-year old man, it was a critical and commercial success. It was followed by a series of works similarly focused on married life and sexuality. Colette admitted at this time she had grown fascinated by age disparity in sexual relationships, and many of her novels promoted a romanticised ideal of the older woman as a wise and worldly match for younger partners.
She was granted the title Countess by the UOC in 1922, and received the Order of Arts and Letters, Order of Civic Virtue, and Order of Merit.
Colette was 66 years old when Alscia voted to join the Free Territories. She was offered inclusion on the honoured citizens list but politely declined, replying, "I don't intend to retire just yet." During the Liberation War, she published two volumes of memoirs in 1941–1942, and Gigi in 1944. The latter became one of her best-known works, the story of a young woman groomed to be a courtesan to be a wealthy lover but marries him instead. Her writing output gradually declined during this time, increasingly confined to novellas and short stories. Her last work was published in 1949.
Later life and death
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Colette enjoyed a comfortable retirement, being a famous public figure and celebrated woman of letters. She was approached by various political parties to stand for office, but declined on account of her advanced age and health issues. She lived to see the emergence of the francité movement, which bolstered her standing in Gylian literature, and was an honourary member of OMFLG and ACFEN.
She jokingly compared her last years to a living history reenactor, due to her strong association with Alscia.
She suffered from arthritis in her final years, and died on 7 April 1963, aged 90. The Darnan Cyras government gave her an official funeral.
Private life
Colette identified as bisexual and an atheist. She was married twice, with both marriages ending in divorce, and had a series of affairs with famous men and women, notably including Anaïs Nin. She had one daughter, also named Colette (1913–1983), who became her mother's literary executor after her death.
Legacy
Colette is recognised as a key figure in Gylian literature, particularly in the French language. Françoise Chatelain commented that Colette was to the French language what Anca Déuréy was to the Gylic languages. She wrote in a refined and standard form of French, well-suited to Alscian times, and is now seen as a leading representative of la vieille belle française ("the old, beautiful French"), whose upper class sociolect diverged sharply from the predominant variety of Gylian French, especially after its reforms. Her writing style was recognised for its graceful brevity and astute portrayal of relationships.
She was famous in life for her bohemianism, once jokingly remarking that "a little succès de scandale is good for the soul". Her criticism of women's conventional lives made her an important voice in feminist writing, although she admitted she was more of a "romance writer" than successors who were more explicit about sexuality. She was sometimes caricatured in her later career as the "poet laureate of May-December relationships", a label she did not mind. Chéri and Gigi were praised for their exploration of the topic in a mature and romantic manner.
Colette's career was strongly advantaged by her association with the "hurried province", to the point that her output declined in the Free Territories. L'Actualité wrote in 2000 that Colette and Cécile Sorel were vitally important to the development of francité, and they both lived "exuberantly full lives" that provided attractive models of old age — Colette having "grown old and died with comparable dignity and grace", and Cécile the lively aging rouée with a "seemingly bottomless well of anecdotes that enchanted younger generations".