''Claudine at School'' () is a 1900 novel by the French writer

Colette Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (; 28 January 1873 – 3 August 1954), known as Colette or Colette Willy, was a French author and woman of letters. She was also a Mime artist, mime, actress, and journalist. Colette is best known in the English-speaki ...

. The narrative recounts the final year of

secondary school A secondary school, high school, or senior school, is an institution that provides secondary education. Some secondary schools provide both ''lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) and ''upper secondary education'' (ages 14 to 18), i.e., b ...

of 15-year-old Claudine, her brazen confrontations with her headmistress, Mlle Sergent, and her fellow students. It was Colette's first published novel, originally attributed to her first husband, the writer

Willy Willy or Willie is a masculine, male given name, often a diminutive form of William or Wilhelm, and occasionally a nickname. It may refer to: People Given name or nickname * Willie Allen (basketball) (born 1949), American basketball player and ...

. The work is assumed to be highly autobiographical and includes lyrical descriptions of the Burgundian countryside, where Colette grew up.

Plot

Claudine, a fifteen-year-old girl, lives in Montigny, with her father, who is more interested in

mollusks Mollusca is a phylum of protostomic invertebrate animals, whose members are known as molluscs or mollusks (). Around 76,000 extant species of molluscs are recognized, making it the second-largest animal phylum after Arthropoda. The num ...

than in his daughter. Claudine attends the small village school, which is the primary location of her many adventures, presented as an intimate journal. The journal begins with the new school year, marked by the arrival of the new headmistress, Miss Sergent, and her assistant, Miss Aimée Lanthenay, as well as the boys' instructors, Mr. Duplessis and Mr. Rabastens. Although Claudine begins an affair early on with Miss Lanthenay, Miss Sergent soon discovers the liaison and discourages Miss Lanthenay, ultimately taking her on as her own lover. Claudine feels betrayed and causes trouble for the two women with the help of her friends, cynical Anaïs and childlike Marie Belhomme. Miss Lanthenay's sister Luce arrives at school, and Claudine mistreats her, but Luce idolizes Claudine nonetheless. Some major events of the school year documented in the novel are the final exams, the opening of the new school, and a ball to mark the visit of an important political minister to the town. At the end of the book, everyone is at the ball when Miss Sergent's mother suddenly throws a man's shoe downstairs into the parlor from the living quarters upstairs. Everyone is silent downstairs as the elder Sergent yells at her daughter for disgracing the family by sleeping with the superintendent of the school district. Miss Sergent's attraction to the man had been mentioned earlier by Claudine, who dismissed it when Sergent stole Aimée away from her. Publicly humiliated, Miss Lanthenay runs off crying while Luce and Claudine laugh.

Major themes

''Claudine at School'' as well as being a

coming of age Coming of age is a young person's transition from being a child to being an adult. The specific age at which this transition takes place varies between societies, as does the nature of the change. It can be a simple legal convention or can b ...

story is an example of homoerotic fiction in the tradition of Gertrude Stein's '' Fernhurst'' (1904), Ivy Compton-Burnett's '' More Women than Men'' (1934), Christa Winsloe's '' The Child Manuela'' (1933), or

Dorothy Bussy Dorothy Bussy ( Strachey; 24 July 1865 – 1 May 1960) was an English novelist and translator, close to the Bloomsbury Group. Family background and childhood Dorothy Bussy was a member of the Strachey family. Her mother was suffragist J ...

's '' Olivia'' (1949).

Reception

Upon its publication in 1900, Colette's novel was heralded by Charles Marras for its "maturity of language and style". It was immediately successful, yet it brought Colette scandal as well.

Film, TV or theatrical adaptations

''Claudine at School'' has had several French film adaptations. * ''Claudine à l'école'' (1917) * '' Claudine at School'' (1937) * ''Claudine à l'école'' (1978 – made for TV) On August 7, 1910, the ''New York Times'' reported: "Paris, Aug. 6. – G. P. Centenini, in conjunction with Gabriel Astruc, has obtained from Rudolph Berger the right of representation in the United States of Berger's operetta ''Claudine'', the libretto of which is based on a series of lively French novels by Willy, which have had considerable vogue. Berger is a Viennese and Parisian combined. He has written many popular waltzes, of one of which 2,000,000 copies were sold in a year. ''Claudine'' will be produced in Paris at the

Moulin Rouge Moulin Rouge (, ; ) is a cabaret in Paris, on Boulevard de Clichy, at Place Blanche, the intersection of, and terminus of Rue Blanche. In 1889, the Moulin Rouge was co-founded by Charles Zidler and Joseph Oller, who also owned the Olympia (Par ...

." The Actors' Charitable Trust in Londontactactors.org
/ref> has an A4 coloured poster (by Clérice Frères) for the Moulin Rouge production of ''Claudine'' which does mention Colette: "Opérette en 3 Actes de Willy, d'après les Romans de Willy & Colette Willy."

References

External links

''Claudine à l'école''
in French * {{Colette 1900 French novels 1900s LGBTQ novels Novels by Colette French autobiographical novels French bildungsromans Novels about lesbian topics Novels set in high schools and secondary schools French novels adapted into films Novels set in France