This is a guest post by Carol Mastrangelo Bové, author of Colette and the Incest Taboo.
Julia Kristeva’s book Colette sparked my interest in an author I had not understood when I first read her decades ago. So literary critics may well influence our tastes and also our values, I am convinced in this post-election period when widely different priorities prevail. I had thought her a novelist primarily interested in cats and dogs. The picture of Colette’s psychology as revealed in her writing does convey a complex relationship to her pets. It is, however, relevant to both Europe and the United States then and now given women’s changing attitudes on mothering and sexual orientation. Her unconventional female characters are part of her innovative approach to modernist writing, marked by her invention of autofiction as well.
Her biography, especially the intense feelings for her mother evident in My Mother’s House (I’m currently finishing a new translation of this novel), the abuse inflicted by her first husband, her same-sex relations with her partner Missy and the sexual relationship with her stepson, provides the frame to understand more fully the implications of her work. It was in 1920 at the age of 47 that she developed an incestuous relationship with her 17-year-old stepson, Bertrand, that continued for five years. Two years later, she went with him to Saint-Sauveur, after which she wrote My Mother’s House where she expresses a sense of remorse, a possible reference to the relationship. Such are the prominent real-life experiences underlying the exploration of her sense of self in her writing.
A word about my title: it does not imply that Colette condones incest. Rather that the novel enables the reader to reflect on incestuous longings and better cope with them while enjoying the beauty of her writing. From a Kristevan perspective, in her female characters, she creates a psychic formation, especially incestuous desire, which is not a ‘perversion’ but rather a creative and healthy confrontation with and subversion of the status quo. Briefly said, her fiction offers knowledge, therapy and aesthetic pleasure in ways previously unrecognised.
Research in psychology recognises the widespread, enduring problem of incestuous relationships and their harmful effects. Paul-Claude Racamier defined the incestual concept in his L’Inceste et l’incestuel in 1995, making a distinction between sexual relations between family members and treating a love object as a child. Cognitive-behavioural psychology, more common in the United States than psychoanalysis, also recognises the problem. Robert Epstein, for example, examines this issue in a recent broad study.
Colette was the first woman writer in France to receive a state funeral and also the topic of a recent BBC podcast highlighting her relevance today and the need to re-evaluate and to translate her writing (https://pca.st/tuzji34j). A variety of other noteworthy events are contributing to a buzz around Colette and her work, calling attention to her for both scholarly and mainstream readers. For example, recently, Antoine Compagnon’s excellent book Un Été avec Colette and Rachel Careau’s translation of Chéri and the End of Chéri (with foreword by Lydia Davis and well-reviewed in the New York Times) indicate that this is the right moment for an Anthem symplokē Series book on her.
Controversy followed her to the end. The Archbishop of Paris refused her a Catholic burial because of her multiple divorces but after an international protest, she became the first woman writer to receive a national funeral in France. The English author and journalist, Graham Greene, wrote a famous letter to the archbishop in support of Colette. She continues to garner praise and popularity the world over for her controversial exploration of women’s psychology in a changing environment.