| Madam Colette was perhaps the most controversial female writer of French literature. During her most productive years as a novelist Colette has written extensively on the themes of childhood, love, marital life. Passionate and tumultuous, her writings were largely based on her own experiences of three successive marriages. Colette attempted to find answers to the troubled life by observing the simplest of things; a spider on its web, one pussy stretching out in the lawn, perfumes of the summer wind, the first rays of the sun which she describes in a subtle and sensual way. The presence of autobiography and fiction in hers novels where 'I' and the 'she' of her successive heroines became the 'me' of Colette, expresses her freedom of existence and to define her own aesthetics. The novelist as such has succeeded in maintaining the critical uncertainty around her work. But this ambiguity may contain valuable information on the genesis, development, and training of her writing. Colette admits to the autobiographical nature of her works and acknowledges presenting fragments of her love life. Conventionally colettienne works are distinguished into two important genres; the novels written in the first person and when the author distances herself from her heroines and also blurs the boundaries between her imaginations and her collections of memories. |