Colette’s Advice Column

Translated by Zack Rogow and Renée Morel

The French write Colette (1873–1954) wrote many books, including the novels Gigi and Cheri, made into popular movies. Colette also had an advice column in the women’s magazine Marie Claire during the years 1939 and 1940. These translations are from Shipwrecked on a Traffic Island and Other Previously Untranslated Gems by Colette published by State University of New York Press. The translations copyright 2014 by Zack Rogow and Renée Morel. The translators wish to thank Anne de Jouvenel, Foulques de Jouvenel, and Hugues de Jouvenel for their cooperation in making these texts available to English-speaking readers.

The first letter-writer refers to Saint Catherine’s Day, November 25. Saint Catherine is the patron saint of unmarried women. In France, during this period, friends would be supportive of single women on that day and sometimes organize a party where a woman could meet a prospective husband.

From Denise in Despair:

In May, I met a young man. At the beginning he told me he loved me, and since I had never flirted, never known another young man, I put all my trust in him. I still love him with all my soul. From the start, he didn’t hide from me that he had flirted before, but he swore to me that he would love only me from then on. So we saw each other for a month and a half, and at the end of June he left town for a three-month vacation, and went home to stay with his parents in N. During those three months, he didn’t write to me. When he returned in October for his third year of teacher training college, we reconnected and clearly enjoyed being together again. A week after this meeting, he wrote to me a letter full of remorse, doubts, telling me that he wasn’t worthy of my love (since I’d never stopped loving him and thinking of him despite his silence). In this letter, he asks my forgiveness for having made me suffer and promises to try to change in order to be worthy of a love as pure as mine, as he says. Then he tells me that he never liked me as in “love,” he just wanted to flirt; he realizes that he was wrong. He says he feels for me a very, very strong friendship. He still writes to me and keeps asking my forgiveness and says he wants to always be a sincere friend to me. In other words, there hasn’t been a break-up at all. On Saint Catherine’s Day, he sent me a card with these words: “Georgette, permit me to wish...