Customer Reviews

Claudine at School

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This semi-autobiographical book starred an absolutely adorable fearless adolescent girl who thinks herself very sophistocated & worldy in all matters. Colette's perceptions about adults from a child's perspective are frank, canny and hilarious. The first and best of the Claudine novels, though all of them are quite good.

I was just a little disappointed with this fictionalized school reminiscence by Colette, of whom I had formed an image as being glamorous and delightfully witty. I went to a girls' school myself some sixty years later, and it was interesting that school leaving exams had not changed very much in all those years, but it was actually a bit boring to go through all that again. Claudine, the narrator and heroine, while bright and ludicrously independent for her age, is not a very nice person. Motherless and emotionally abandoned by her father, one can't really blame her, and she gets top marks for self-assertion, winning nasty little feminine games, and surviving whatever emotional blows and mild sexual abuse come her way.

The book is a very detailed social portrait of a French provincial girls' school at the end of the nineteenth century. It points out, without in the least preaching, how society disrespected and neglected girls and women, leaving them to work out wily ways of survival, and teaching them to despise each other. The sheer sadness of this reality removes some delight from Colette's intelligence and wittiness. The lesbian episodes may once have been very shocking to readersand therefore a little exciting, but nowadays their shock value is very much diminished, and the viciousness of the young women involved leaves one very cold indeed. The book ends with a description of an end-of-school festivity combined with the dedication of a new school. Once more the deprivation of the children is underlined by the delight they take in these simple pleasures, and again those who should be protecting the girls and promoting their emotional and intellectual development, act, instead, as dirty old men. The irony is bitter where I had hoped for sweet.