La représentation des personnages féminins de Colette avant et après la Première Guerre mondiale

At the time that the French novelist Colette was writing, there was a clear hierarchy between the genders that limited the representation of women in literature. In examining the main female characters within two of Colette’s novels, Chéri (1920) and La fin de Chéri (1926), we see that the characters Léa and Edmée disrupt this hierarchy. Specifically, they disturb the patriarchal structures of the time through their representation of the feminist ideas of autonomy in the aspect of freedom of choice, sexual liberation, the inversion of gender roles, and the creation of an individual identity. Since these novels take place before and after World War I respectively, we find that the main female characters represent these ideas in their relationships differently, which reveals the impact the war had on French society