Home » France » Colette » L’ingénue libertine (The Innocent Libertine
Colette: L’Ingénue libertine (The Innocent Libertine)
Colette’s work went out of copyright in 2025 so we can expect to see more translations and retranslations of her work. This was first published in English translation in 1968 by Antonia White who translated several other Colette works. Apart from a somewhat dubious Indian translation (translator not named) this is the first since then.
Our heroine is Minne, a fourteen year old French schoolgirl. We are told that she still has a girlish figure. She lives with her widowed mother (never named) who is devoted to her daughter. Minne attends a posh girls’ school called Souhait which means wish in French.
However we learn early on that there is gang warfare going on on the streets of Paris. The latest one involves a sixteen year old girl nicknamed Coppertop who can box, wrestle and is handy with a revolver. In the latest altercation five people are left for dead and are rushed to hospital and Coppertop and Curly the gang leader have disappeared. Minne is fascinated by these events and eagerly reads about them every day in the paper and is concerned about what has happened to Copperhead.
Now when she goes to school she sees a man hanging round and is convinced that it is Curly and that he is waiting for her. Indeed, she feels he might even climb up to her bedroom and take her away on his motorcycle.Her mother eventually notices him and not surprisingly her view is the complete opposite of her daughter’s. When the man is no longer there, she is convinced that has been arrested and taken to prison and now awaits the guillotine.
Maman as she is called and Minne are in close touch with Minne’s Uncle Paul and his eighteen year old son, Antoine. Uncle Paul is a doctor and had done good works in Africa and China but now lives in the country. They come to lunch every week. When Minne starts behaving erratically as a result of getting upset about the fate of the man she thinks is Curly, she is whisked off to Uncle Paul’s house in the country as Uncle Paul is convinced the country air will cure her.
Minne is not overly impressed with Antoine and he is aware of this. He has strong feelings for her but is concerned by her often erratic behaviour. We see several examples of this such as when she is determined, without any evidence whatsoever, that an old retainer is a child abductor and murderer.
ANtoine’s attraction for her increases and she is very much added to his imaginary harem which also includes the actress Polaire and Dido of Carthage! However he does not always behave in a gentlemanly way towards her though he does propose to her and is of course rejected because, as she tells him, she is engaged to Curly, which Antoine does not believe.
The final episode of the first art of this book has her thinking she sees Curly and pursuing him through the back streets. She gets very lost and things go wring, with her finally returning home in a terrible state, something that will have a greater effect on her mother than on herself.
We now jump forward to what is the second of the two original books. Minne has married Antoine, not least because her mother, on her deathbed, urged her to do so, feeling no-one else would do so after her adventure. Minne does not agree with this. She could’ve married 36,000 people, she says, and she now regrets her marriage The book opens with little Baron Coudrec saying he is going to sleep with her which he does. Minne and Antoine live in Paris, Antoine spends the day at work while Minne has the odd romantic liaison. She enjoys them to a certain degree but does not find them as fulfilling as she would like, though in two years of marriage she has only had three affairs.
We follow her life in Paris society where, of course, she meets her prospective beaux. Her society contacts are fairly limited but, when she goes to a concert and, towards the end of of the book when she and Antoine go to Monte Carlo, she seems to bump into the same people. They all seem to indulge in idle gossip and comment on the affairs of people they know. Everyone seems to know who is having affairs with whom and when Minne says that she has only ever slept with Antoine, they all burst out laughing. One place they meet is the Palais de Glace, i.e. the ice rink, where Minne learns to ice skate.
However the focus is on her lovers as she at times she plays one off against another. She claims she has never yet entered a bachelor’s apartment without finding herself enfolded in a man,s arms, kissed, undressed, possessed and disappointed. In short she remains unsatisfied.
Antoine becomes suspicious and hires a detective to follow her. She spots him straight away, assuming at first that he is some sort of lecher and then realises who he is and leads him on a merry dance.
Minne very much wants to be her own woman, free and independent, doing what she wants but not being too sure what it is that she wants. She does not have too much respect for the various men in her life, possibly because she lost her father early in her life and Uncle Paul, worthy though he is, does not inspire her. However, despite various ups and downs, like her creator, she always manages to pull through. As with Claudine in her earlier works, Minne remains a fascinating and interesting woman.
First published in 1909 by Ollendorff
First published in English in 1968 bySecker and Warburg
Translated by Antonia White. (Secker & Warburg); Graham Anderson (Dedalus)