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3. Colette and Proust: Queering Modernism Colette and Androcentrism Despite serious differences in approaching narrative between the mainstream novelists of the nineteenth century and the high modernists of the early twentieth century and even the young Sartre who will follow them, there remains a seeming allegiance to verisimilitude and a reasoned, logical approach to narrative. Many nineteenth-century authors try to reproduce reality through an objective approach; early twentieth-century narratives, ushered in by the publication of André Gide’s work L’Immoraliste, take a more subjective approach, whether it is through the use of a first-person narrator or through the imposition of a third-person narrator who does not pretend to be the universal and omniscient narrator central to realist narrative . Still, the reduced point of view makes claims to the possibility of depicting the truth, when there is still the belief in a grand narrative, as there is for Proust and, to a lesser extent, Colette, whose challenge to grand narrative is based on a challenge to androcentrism.1 And even when there is no belief in absolutes, as for Sartre, the early narratives are an attempt to construct the truth through action and the imposition of meaning on what he will eventually classify under the category of the absurd. As much as André Gide once seemed central to the development of the modernist canon, as Proust’s star has risen, Gide’s importance seems to have diminished, his place taken over to some extent by Colette. What once appeared revolutionary in Gide’s confessional mode may seem less exciting today, depending on the reader’s perspective, and the formal inventions of modernism, such as the narrative techniques displayed in Les Faux-monnayeurs , seem also to be more clever than revolutionary when faced with the worlds that Proust and Colette created. In specific, Proust and Colette unbalance gender lines and sexual orientations in a far more problematic way than Gide does. If, in his confessional mode, Gide is more revealing about his own personal inclinations than either of the other two authors—and this 124 Colette and Proust: Queering Modernism 125 despite his caveat about never saying ‘‘I’’—he never turns his personal proclivities into a problematizing of the text and narrative. Proust and Colette may not be ‘‘out’’ the way Gide is in his confessional works, but their narratives are ultimately far more queer than his. In this chapter then, I shall examine some aspects of the writing of Colette and Proust that take on questions of queering narrative through gender bending. These approaches will not be exhaustive studies, but rather will focus on singular problematics that relate to the ways narrative is constructed through an articulation of gender. At the same time, the subjects on which I shall focus are essential to comprehending the ways in which each author understands how the representation of gender and the possibilities of verisimilitude intersect and how each has an effect on the other. Both Colette and Proust go beyond the normative position that Gide maintains through his writing, with the possible exception of various ‘‘queer’’ moments in Les Caves du Vatican, as opposed to the confessional modes in Si le grain ne meurt and other related works. Since Colette’s writing began to receive major critical attention through a reconsideration of the modernist canon and an impetus derived from the increasing presence of feminist studies in U.S. universities in particular, her work has predominantly been viewed as gynocentric. Critical emphasis has been placed on her constructions, depictions, and representations of women and the feminine in general. Starting with the Claudine series and continuing through much of the writing that followed, Colette’s protagonists are almost invariably women, and her explorations of the feminine sit at the heart of her writing. The one salient exception to Colette’s gynocentrism is Chéri, with its very belated and much weaker sequel, La Fin de Chéri. Colette portrays a protagonist in a work in which women—the protagonist’s older lover Léa and his rather monstrous mother, Madame Peloux—occupy secondary or reactive (as opposed to proactive) roles. While for Kristeva, the appearance of monstrosity in Colette’s work dates from a bit later and continues through the thirties, whereas Chéri belongs to the era of ‘‘transgressive sexuality’’ that includes both La Maison de Claudine and Le Blé en herbe,2 I believe that there are already elements of the future monstrosity, especially as figured in...

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