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libera tioni st; sh e is a nondogma ti c, nonpol emical social revolutiona ry
for whom the affectless pan-sexuality of her characters is the symbo l
most immedia te
to
hand for the defo rma tions we su stain as we perform
our o ften hi ghl y-skill ed social fun ction s to no purpose and without
sati sfaction.
In a kind of conspicuous consumption of literacy there u sed to be
an En glish pastime-perhap s there still is-in whi ch one specul a ted
on wha t would happen if, say, Samuel John son met Winston
Churchill or J ane Au sten , Kafka. Myself, I wonder wha t wo uld have
happened if George Elio t had met Colette; I like to think they would
have had much warmth fo r each other-Colette too , after all , fl outed
the conventi ons in her priva te life whil e in her writing she loca ted
herself, like Eli o t, no farther from the traditional social center than was
readil y p ermitted within the rul es o f her culture. According to these
rul es, the men Co lette wrote about might be persona ll y des troyed by
love but no t as a sex, onl y as individuals whose force of feeling, were it
countenan ced by society, would subvert the es tablished order-after all ,
it is not sociall y useful fo r a young man to fall too much in love with
his middl e-aged mi stress. It is women who, in transgress ing social
decorum, suffer as a sex. Colette is a very good writer indeed; a second
voice speaks in h er books LOO, compensating for the social submi ssive–
ness o f even her autobiographical writin g, wrapping a li ght cloak of
di ssent around her seemin g willingness to accept social di ctate. But
neither thi s criti cal irony no r her sexua l subj ect make her a writer o f
female libera ti on , as she is now often taken to be: sexuality as a genera l
issue and fema le revo luti on as a pa rti cul a r one a re no t the same
enterpri se. Colette was too intelligent and rea listi c to suppose tha t life
is li ved , or can be lived, o ther than within society. T h e social organi za–
ti on was, for h er, virtuall y a construct o f na ture and she was much a
child of na ture.
T he
therenesso f
the English social o rgani za ti on , its thi ck actuality
as compa red to the thinness o f the American social texture, was of
course wha t had drawn Henry James to make hi s home in England. He
LOo k with him from thi s country a full cas t of characters [or future
books, and among them was Isabel Archer. Isabel Archer's story,
Portrait of a Lady,
remains, to my view, the best novel no t
of
female
libera ti on but
about
female libera ti on tha t has yet been written , indeed
the o nl y grea t one. Th a t it was written by a man is strikin g but
irrelevant here. No on e has ever understood better than James did th e
special vuln erability o f women to cultura l influence. Isabel Archer' s
search for female fulfillment ta kes place in Eu rope but in an a tmos-
