Preview of The Vagabond Summary:

The foregoing topic also constitutes a major theme of the novel. Renee's problem goes beyond the making of this decision — she elects to remain independent — and encompasses her attempt to choose the sort of person she wants to be. Since she is a writer as well as a performer, Renee has a more than casually complex set of options.

She delights in writing or at least experiences the need (as Colette said of her own feeling) to "seize . . . the iridescent, fugitive, bewitching adjective."

A further dimension of Renee's dilemma is her suspicion of human relationships, largely, of course, because of what she regards as her betrayal by her former husband, so that she tells herself on "lucid days," "Be careful! Keep alert! All who approach you are suspect." The whole question of marriage is seen as deliverance from vocational servitude into another, perhaps worse, captivity: the...