Another Colette: The Question of Gendered Writing

by Lynne Huffer

Despite the reading public's ready embrace of French writer Colette (1873-1954) as author and public figure, her work has sometimes been dismissed as trivial or feminine and as largely unassimilable to the major trends that mark twentieth-century French literary studies. This study critically rereads the author's oeuvre to reveal another Colette - one who employed specific narrative strategies to construct a gendered textual subject separate from herself - and highlights the contradictions that arise from that construction.
Another Colette offers a revisionary reading of Colette in light of poststructuralist and feminist criticism, particularly that of Derrida, Lacan, and Kristeva, and makes a significant contribution to current questions regarding the relationship of gender, sexuality, and language. In moving beyond the traditional gesture of reading the work of a woman writer as no more than her own experience, the study argues for a view of language that expands the possibilities of rereading. This analysis of Colette as text thus questions previous conceptions of reading "woman"; in reading Colette as more than Colette, the book opens up a range of future possibilities of reading as.
Another Colette will interest scholars and students of Colette and of twentieth-century French literature. It will also appeal to feminist scholars and those working on theoretical questions regarding gender, sexuality, and language.

208 pages, Hardcover

First published March 15, 1993