Claudine at School

“Two months ago, when I passed my fifteenth birthday, I let my skirts down to my ankles, the old schoolhouse was razed and the schoolmistress changed. The long skirts were demanded by my legs which were attracting attention and already gave me the look of a young woman; the old school was falling to pieces; and as for the teacher, poor good woman, forty, ugly, ignorant, mild and always terrified of the inspectors, the Doctor Duterte, a cantonal delegate, needed her post to give to one of his political protégées. Poor old school, dilapidated, unhealthy but what fun . …”

Claudine is a mischievous fifteen-year-old, full of her sex and rampaging through the dusty corridors of a parochial school in provincial France. The prettiest, the smartest and wildest of her class, she sows discord among her less light-footed fellow-students and their slow-moving teachers.

Published at the turn-of-the century, Colette’s sharp-eyed account of adolescent life in Montigny, was a shocker when it first appeared. Mirroring her own upbringing, Claudine at School displays all the verve and searing honesty that separated Colette from lesser talents.