Point of View

The vast majority of Colette's stories are written in the first-person. Interestingly, these first-person stories usually feature Colette herself or a fictionalized version of herself as the narrator. She presents herself as an extremely reliable narrator who sees things clearly, with a sense of humor about everyday life. Stories about other characters, which do not feature Colette, are invariably told from the third-person point of view. However, Colette allows her readers to sympathize with what might otherwise be unsympathetic characters by providing an especially profound third-person limited point of view, helping her readers to get into the minds of characters like music hall dancers, unfaithful wives, or murderers. In these stories, Colette herself never makes an appearance. One exception to the first-person point of view is the collection of dialogues for one voice. While these stories are technically in the third person because of the quotation...