Building Your Library: Gigi
Author: Colette
Recommended Texts:
Gigi in English
Gigi in French
An additional note: Gigi is not available in English as a kindle book so if you’re an English reader I don’t recommend buying any digital copy until you are absolutely certain that it is an English version.
During the week following Madame d’Exelman’s suicide, Lachaille’s reactions were somewhat incoherent. He engaged the stars of the National Musical Academy to dance at a midnight fête held at his own house, and, wishing to give a supper party at the Pré-Catalan, he arranged for that restaurant to open a fortnight earlier than was their custom. The clowns, Footit et Chocolat, did a turn: Rita del Erido caracoled on horseback between the supper tables, wearing a divided skirt of white lace flounces, a white hat on her black hair with white ostrich feathers frothing round the relentless beauty of her face. Indeed, Paris mistakenly proclaimed, such was her beauty, that Gaston Lachaille was hoisting her astride a throne of sugar. Twenty-four hours later, Paris was undeceived. For in the false prophecies it had published, Gil Blas nearly lost the subsidy it received from Gaston Lachaille. A specialized weekly, Paris en amour, provided another red herring, under the headline: “Young Yankee millionaires makes no secret of weakness for French sugar." Gigi by Colette
Let’s take a trip to Paris by way of Colette’s wonderfully escapist novela Gigi; it will be both greener to simply slip this thin volume off your shelf and drape yourself languidly across your fashionable chaise lounge, and also a newfound necessity since many of us are currently self isolating. Not to mention, there is no way to travel to the Paris of Colette, while the city is beautifully preserved texts like Colette’s backward glance from 1945 (the novel was published the year World War II ended) to the Paris of Colette’s life in Paris during the Belle Epoque, a period that ended in 1914 with the start of the First World War) give us a glimpse to a Paris of a different time and place. One of the beauties of traveling through literature is the glimpse (however brief and small) at another age since we can materially travel across space but not time.
Gigi, set sometime between 1898 and 1902 is a novela set in the Paris of the Belle Époque and follows the coming of age of the titular jeune fille (young girl) Gilberte. Gilberte, we learn, is undergoing a unique upbringing in an all female society. The women doing the raising, her grandmother and great-aunt, are each retired demimondaines or courtesans, a class of women who in habit the demimonde the “half-world” of a kept women. This figure, during the Belle Époque, stereotypically lived a lavish lifestyle, reaching beyond her station in life through conducting affairs with wealthy men. They are beautiful, sophisticated, well-trained in the art of entertaining and attracting and keeping the attention of their keepers. Gigi’s Aunt Alicia provides the example of all a woman can attain as a demimondaine, and while she never marries she lives in a comfortable retirement in a fashionable Parisian house of her own, wears beautiful clothing and fine jewelry. She provides a strong contrast to Gigi’s grandmother, Madame Alvarez, who appears as the less successful demimondaine, impoverished by the cost of having a child and a grandchild and who, we learn, never traveled abroad as Alicia did. Alicia is a window for the reader into the lavish world that Mme. Alvarez and Alicia are training Gigi up for, but, Gigi at fifteen shows no inclination, and if anything an obtuse resistance to following in the footsteps of her family. From the distance of 1945 perhaps Colette looked back and saw the generational divide between the adults of the Belle Époque (the demimondaine is supposed to have disappeared at the end of this age) and the young women who were offered a public education under the first Republic, and, indeed, Gigi’s public education, which would put her in the category of “the new French woman” does seem to offer her an outsiders view into her family’s “profession.” Showing us the life Gigi might have is wealthy industrialist and heir to a sugar fortune Gaston Lachaille, a friend of Madame Alvarez who, when he isn’t appearing in the pages of the gossip columns is often at the home of the fading demimonde. His break with his own demimondaine Liane provides an opportunity that becomes the central conflict of the plot.
Gigi, as with many of Colette’s novels, upon first reading is frivolous, light, and delectable. It is easy to read the novel, set against a backdrop of free flowing champagne, fine-dining, and pure entertainment, as pure escapism from the grim and poor years of the occupation. However, Colette is one of those novelists whose work always conceals beneath its candy like exterior and easy, simple prose, many layers of social critique and reflection, making it one of those rare works of literature that is both a pure pleasure to read the first time and also a work that is endlessly fascinating to reread. I’ve read it three times in English and I’m working on my second read through in French and I have yet to tire of it. It is surprising how little read the novel, and Colette’s entire oeuvre, is in the present, but that means familiarity with the works of Colette add a touch of refinement and worldliness to your library. You can do your first read through in approximately a day, and in the meantime I will (as usual) post two more posts on ways to approach reading Gigi that may enrich your experience, so come back to the Maison for that whenever you feel ready, and if you’re new here perhaps check out this post on beginning to take notes on a work of literature, and feel free to browse my library for further reading ideas.
A final note on the linked editions. As of today I have created an affiliate account with bookshop so the links I have posted above are links specifically to my shop and I’ll be building out that shop. So, first, I want to encourage you to shop with your preferred local book store because supporting local literary culture is really important, especially during COVID when these brick and mortar shops are hurting more than ever. Second, should you want to support my projects, Maison Metropolitanist and @TheMetropolitanist on Instagram, shopping through my shop on bookshop is one (and currently the only) way to do so. As an affiliate I would receive 10% and that money will go to supporting the yearly costs of this website as well as purchasing equipment particularly as I would like to expand this site onto youtube.