Colette In Light Of Ecofeminism

She is the wild child Claudine, the vagabond actress Renee, the Goddess of Love with blonde hair Lea, the Great Mother Sido; her only life burst into full bloom in four different forms—she is Sidonie Gabrielle Colette, a legendary female who enjoyed freedom but was also bounded by the "Belle Epoque". In the 20th century, women’s Movement spread fast in Europe, while Colette, who was in France located in the center of Europe, has just begun her female writing, using her body as the ink: she was an actress and dancer who performed half-naked dance fully at ease on the stage of the Moulin Rouge; she became a writer and reporter who recorded women who behaved against decency; she asked for freedom as well as self-indulgence. While her contemporary writers mainly concentrated on writing the grand issues about society, politics and history, Colette built a more distant and subtle space-women’s inner world. On the ruins of patriarchy, large industry and Christ theology, Colette rebuilt the lost Garden of Eden through her writing, where plants, animals, half-gods and human beings are all equal as nature’s sons and live together harmoniously. The Nora who left her home has retrieved the pride and freedom as a woman; the wild nature and the pursuit of desire became the most eye-catching female characteristics in Colette’s writing.According to the analysis of the former scholars, Colette’s life experiences and her explicit writing of female desire often lead to the feminists’criticism and suspicion. In addition, Colette’s conscious alienation of the women’s movement and women’s thought decides that her female writing, which played a vanguard role, did not receive objective understanding and evaluation. From the perspective of ecofeminism and adopting Val Plumwood’s criticism mode which aims to subvert the duality, this thesis analyzes the themes of nature, the style about nature, the female images and the opposition and resistance reflected by the sublimation in Colette’s works to restore her female writing beyond her era.This thesis is divided into four chapters:Chapter one probes into the themes of nature and the human-nature duality in Colette’s works. Firstly, the nature described by Colette breaks away with the personalized strokes of traditional flora and fauna records and preserves the natural instinct and pride. What follows is to take the depersonalization of nature as the evaluation criteria, which advocates that the narrow sense of violence and elegance, beauty and terror is only human’s feeling and does not exist in the natural world. Secondly, Colette’s works truthfully recorded how human as the master destroy the flora and fauna. In order to fight against the anthropocentric superiority, Colette did not hesitate to choose the animal nature instead of human nature and her works has also become the hymn of the natural world.Chapter two subverts the soul-body duality by studying Colette’s natural writing style. On the one hand, this chapter studies Colette’s sensitive writing style which is established by her pure sensory feelings to the world rather than rationality; on the other hand, this chapter involves the spontaneity of the text. Colette’s natural, concise and sparkling language all came from her intuitive experience of being a dancer, mummer and gourmet, thus Colette’s creative art was also called "Body Writing". The body devoted to the text creates Colette’s "Female New Alphabet", and the body emerged from the text becomes the effective revolt against the logocentrism.Chapter three analyzes the images of women in Colette’s works from the viewpoint of men-women duality. Firstly, by exposing women’s insulted and damaged living conditions in marriage and social life, Colette brought the awakening of female consciousness. Secondly, in order to fight against logocentrism, Colette faced the choice of go beyond or identify with the female characteristics. Different from the existential view of women, Colette chose the latter one, which lead to her vanguard position. Through praising the wild nature and desire, Colette brought sexual liberation and more important, the identification that women’s characteristics are better than that of men, thus negated women’s inferior position in men-women binary position.Chapter four analyzes the sublimation of female characteristics. The vamp who openly opposes the phallocentrism emerges with nature and myth and sublimes to be a goddess. This is the purpose of female writing and the ideal female personality in Colette’s mind. Colette was incarnated as Dionysus who walks freely between human and god, wildness and civilization and achieved to the reconciliation between human and nature. Sido was incarnated as the Earth Mother Gaia, whose down-to-earth philosophy and religion brought human world to the primitive brightness of the matriarchal society, and broke away temporarily with the "Faustian" development outlook in modern society characterized by the energy of conquering all, swallowing up nature and even life.Reexamining Colette from the perspective of ecofeminism, it is not difficult to find that her female writing goes beyond her era. The unique writing formed by women, nature and myth not only opens a new road to break the shackles and pursue the body and thought liberation, but also becomes the precedent involving the cooperation between feminism and environmentalism which jointly subverts the rational center of dualism and pursues the liberation of women and nature.