The Aging Colette

Abstract

In her two late works L’Étoile Vesper and Le Fanal bleu, Colette portrays herself as aging and impaired. Yet her experience of aging, immobility, arthritic pain, and the vulnerability they entail were relatively recent in a long vigorous life. To continue to write and create exceptional prose mattered more to an immobilized, suffering, and dependent Colette than they had earlier in her life. Writing under these physical limitations reassured her of her literary and mental vitality. More than that, to continue to write about whatever subject she chose afforded her the only kind of autonomy she could exercise. Yet as much as Colette, through writing, sought to gain some autonomy and control over her aging, pain, and infirmity, she also reveals in these late texts uneasiness about her aging and ongoing losses. Through enigmatic metaphors and paradoxical self-representations, this essay argues, Colette betrays anxiety about her vulnerability as an aging and infirm woman.