Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-wq2xx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-24T14:39:49.472Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

An Onomastic Double Bind: Colette's Gigi and the Politics of Naming

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Susan D. Cohen
Susan D. Cohen*
Affiliation:
Barnard CollegeNew York, New York
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Although Colette did not consider herself a feminist in the activist sense of the term and even mocked feminism as a political movement, her fiction presents the situation of women in ways that stress their specificity and their imposed social inferiority. Gigi addresses the problem of naming as a crucial factor in male-female relations and implicitly identifies it as the nodal point of a struggle for discursive, as well as socioeconomic, identity.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 100 , Issue 5 , October 1985 , pp. 793 - 809
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1985

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Beaumont, Germaine, and Parinaud, André. Colette par elle-même. Paris: Seuil, 1961.Google Scholar
de Beauvoir, Simone. Le deuxième sexe. 2 vols. Paris: Gallimard, 1949.Google Scholar
Bhabha, Homi. “Stereotype and Fantasy: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse.” MLA Convention. New York, 1983.Google Scholar
Colette. La chatte. Edition du centenaire 7. Paris: Flammarion, 1973.Google Scholar
Colette. Chéri. Paris: Fayard, 1983.Google Scholar
Colette. Duo. Edition du centenaire 8. Paris: Flammarion, 1973.Google Scholar
Colette. L'entrave. Paris: Flammarion, 1920.Google Scholar
Colette. La fin de Chéri. Paris: Flammarion, 1983.Google Scholar
Colette. Gigi. Edition du centenaire 10. Paris: Flammarion, 1973.Google Scholar
Colette. L'ingénue libertine. Vol. 3 of Œuvres complètes. Paris: Flammarion, 1949.Google Scholar
Colette. Mes apprentissages. Edition du centenaire 8. Paris: Flammarion, 1973.Google Scholar
Colette. La naissance du jour. Edition du centenaire 14. Paris: Flammarion, 1973.Google Scholar
Colette. Le pur et l'impur. Edition du centenaire 7. Paris: Flammarion, 1973.Google Scholar
Colette. La seconde. Edition du centenaire 7. Paris: Flammarion, 1973.Google Scholar
Colette. Le toutounier. Edition du centenaire 8. Paris: Flammarion, 1973.Google Scholar
Colette. La vagabonde. Vol. 4 of Œuvres complètes. Paris: Flammarion, 1949.Google Scholar
Dehon, Claire. “Colette and Art-Nouveau.” Eisinger and McCarty 104–16.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. De la grammatologie. Paris: Minuit, 1967.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques, and McDonald, Christie. “Choreographies.” Diacritics 12 (1982): 66–76.Google Scholar
Eisinger, Erica, and McCarty, Mari, eds. Colette: The Woman, the Writer. University Park: Pennsylvania State UP, 1981.Google Scholar
Godino, Marcelle Biolley. L'homme objet chez Colette. Paris: Klincksieck, 1972.Google Scholar
Lacan, Jacques. Ecrits. Paris: Seuil, 1966.Google Scholar
Le Huenen, Roland, and Perron, Paul. “Le signifiant du personnage dans Eugénie Grandet.” Littérature 14 (1974): 36–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. La pensée sauvage. Paris: Plon, 1962.Google Scholar
Makward, Christiane. “Colette and Signs: A Partial Reading of a Writer Born Not to Write.” Eisinger and McCarty 185–93.Google Scholar
Marks, Elaine. Colette. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1960.Google Scholar
Miller, Nancy. “The Anamnesis of a Female ‘I’: In the Margins of Self-Portrayal.” Eisinger and McCarty 164–76.Google Scholar
Nicole, Eugène. “L'onomastique littéraire.” Poétique 54 (1983): 233–53.Google Scholar
Perret, Delphine. “Les appellatifs.” Langages 17 (1970): 112–18.Google Scholar
Resch, Yannick. Corps féminin, corps textuel: Essai sur le personnage féminin dans l'œuvre de Colette. Paris: Klincksieck, 1973.Google Scholar
Spender, Dale. Man Made Language. London: Routledge, 1980.Google Scholar
Stewart, Joan Hinde. Colette. Boston: Twayne, 1983.Google Scholar