The Claudine Novels: 3

The Complete Claudine by Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette. Highly recommended. * Claudine at School * Claudine in Paris * Claudine Married * Claudine and Annie Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette wrote the Claudine novels when she was in her late twenties, when she was young enough to remember the single-mindedness and bitterness of adolescent fixations and old enough to have acquired the tempered wisdom and understanding of experience. Through Claudine's eyes, the reader sees how the unreserved passion of the young must, of necessity, burn itself out or be transformed into a more lasting love that expresses itself more deeply and less dramatically to ensure its own survival. Not surprisingly, Claudine at School is the most delightful of the series. Our narrator is full of life and mischief, and never fails to indulge in scathing commentary on anything within her limited countryside range-the licentious superintendent of schools, the weak and pretentious assistant masters, and the assistant mistress and head mistress who are literally joined at the lip and hip. Claudine's barbs find targets in everyone, including her father, her former wet nurse and servant, and her best friends. Like her creator, Claudine is a sensualist. She loves that which appeals to her senses, not necessarily her heart or her mind. Claudine craves her first "love," the assistant schoolmistress Aimée Lathenay, for her "slim waist," "lovely eyes," "golden eyes with their curled-up lashes," "complexion," and "supple body" that "seeks and demands an unknown satisfaction." Mademoiselle Lathenay proves her faithlessness quickly, and Claudine makes an abrupt transition from gushing would-be lover to "a chill that froze me." Astute and precocious, Claudine recognizes that Aimée's nature is "frail and egotistical, a nature that likes its pleasures but knows how to look after its own interests." Claudine, calling the loss a "great disappointment," seems to understand that the battle has not been for the love of Aimée, but for her possession. Also like Colette, Claudine seems to sense that sexual relationships between women, a recurring motif throughout the four novels, are somehow incomplete. At this age, however, Claudine does not yet have the experience to make the comparison to a relationship with a man, especially since the men she knows are primarily her single-minded father, the silly assistant masters and the licentious superintendent. Claudine soon learns what it's like to be the object of unrequited adoration and submissiveness, and protests-too much-that she doesn't like it coming from Aimée's younger sister. Despite the 19th-century setting and the adult themes, Colette has captured the essence of the adolescent experience-the testing of authority and its limits, sexual exploration and emotions, interest in the things of the senses, a more realistic view of adults and their foibles, and a sense of being caught between the familiar comforts of childhood and the frightening prospe

Claudine is in school and has good friends and boy friends that she often talks to and refers to in this book. She has as many problems as she does good events. She goes through her life as a journey and these four stories (claudine at school, claudine in Paris, and Annie and Claudine) she describes it in a college reading level but anyone who isn't is still able to understand it and get the gist.

Forget all about English public school boys tales.Forget all about tales of'lost youth flames'(often going hand in hand with the latter,as it turns out..).Let yourself be taken in the land of(early 20th century)French country girl-power and (later on)Paris woman-power by the almighty female writer Colette."The Claudine novels"are witty,fresh,lucid when it comes to the conditions of the heart,and most generally FUN to read!You can see very well what Colette will do in her later ,maturer writing life.A must-read for every and each one soul on earth'Christophe Renaudot.

For a book written in the Victorian era, it's very modern. Claudine evokes a mood, you can taste and feel Paris in 1900. It's a little racy, Claudine has both male and female lovers. How I wish there were more installments to Claudine!