2015: The Year of Reading Women discussion

Discussion and group reads for Colette.

Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colette

J Frederick wrote: "Then The Vagabond, which looks to be an excellent candidate for a group read. "

Actually reading this one now myself; just started it today, and only had time on my commute for the first chapter.

I read it eons ago in French in a French lit survey course. I honestly don't remember it at all! It's like re-encountering her all over again.

Edit: I decided to shelve The Vagabond for now and to read it when the new year starts. I have several male-authored books I want to squeeze in before the year ends!

I own the Pure & the Impure. Looking forward to it.

Posting in this thread to keep tabs on it...

Doing the same actually.

As am I -- she's definitely on my list for 2015.

I just read Angela Carter's essay on Colette (in Nothing Sacred: Selected Writings, which I admit had piqued my interest. Carter seems very much to favor Colette's female protagonists over Rhys', incidentally.

I have read that essay too, don't remember anything negative about Rhys... What did she say?

Not actually much. I think she just much preferred Colette's sense (however in some ways forcibly naive) that women were in no way second class citizens to Rhys' sometimes almost fatalistic sense of societally-programmed doom, which Carter seems to have viewed as a kind of surrender to weakness. Granted, much of Carter's writing at that time addressed the realities still holding women back, but she took a more aggressive position.