Member of the Goncourt Academy, feminist before her time, actress, journalist... the writer Colette is the first French woman to have received a national funeral and, nearly 70 years after her death, her books continue to inspire generations of readers around the world. One place has particularly marked her work, her childhood home in Burgundy, which is now open to the public.
Born in Saint-Sauveur-en-Puisaye (Yonne) on January 28, 1873, Sidonie Gabrielle Colette led a life worthy of a novel! A pioneer in the emancipation of women at the beginning of the 20th century, she claimed her bisexuality very early on and was able to free herself from the control of her first husband over her work by obtaining, after their divorce, to sign her famous Claudine series with her own name.
After having been - in particular - a musical columnist, she led a career in the music hall and made the headlines with her pantomime shows but also her lesbian and heterosexual liaisons, the one with the son of her second husband having inspired her famous novel "Le Blé en herbe". At her death, her sulphurous reputation incited the Catholic Church to refuse her a religious burial. No matter: she was one of the freest women of her time and the first to obtain a national funeral in 1954. Since then she rests in the Père-Lachaise cemetery with her only daughter.
I belong to a country that I left, wrote Colette.
She returned. At home. At home. It was time.
Colette's childhood, her home and her native country are recurrent themes in her work. In spite of her incredible career and the different places where she lived (Paris, the French Riviera), the first 18 years of her life spent in her village of Saint-Sauveur-en-Puisaye will indeed remain an inexhaustible source of inspiration. The world of plants, the animal world, the ability to marvel at beauty and the love of freedom have notably forged his unique literary style and, when visiting this large bourgeois house and its beautiful gardens, one understands how this place could become a literary character.
Cabochon paving, marble fireplaces, oak floors, a richly furnished library... from the color of the wallpapers and curtains to the original furniture and objects, everything has been done to allow visitors to immerse themselves in the benevolent setting of the writer's youth.
A "book-house" opened in 2016 by the Association "La Maison de Colette" after a major rehabilitation and restoration project that gives the impression that its former occupants still live there!
To schedule your discovery of this inspiring house, go here.
Valerie from Comme des Français
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Crédit photo : ©La Maison de Colette
