Psychoanalysis of Colette's The Pure & the Impure

This study will provide a critical psychoanalysis of Colette's novel The Pure and the Impure, focusing on the characters' pursuit of jouissance, or pleasure, specifically sexual pleasure as essential element of love. However, if love is viewed as one's profound emotional connection to the beloved in at least a partial forsaking of one's egocentricity, then this pursuit of jouissance is more an expression of narcissism, or obsessive self-love, than of true love of another. In any case, none of the characters in the novel can be said to be happy because of their pursuit of pleasure or even because of their achieving it. Colette is a liberated woman, but she also a keen observer of the passing scene, not a naive idealist, and she hardly believes that the pursuit or achievement of jouissance will bring happiness. In fact, the more a character is obsessed with jouissance (such as X, the Don Juan), the less likely he will ever find peace, self-acceptance, or happiness. As for Lesbian relationships, Colette is there also most realistic: "We lacked nothing, these women and I: we had every kind of trouble" (Colette 168). Every character seeking pleasure can be said to either fail miserably, or to find, upon achieving that pleasure, that it has not brought the satisfaction sought. These are the "impure" relationships of the title. On the other hand, the Lesbian couple described by the narrator "Colette" in Chapter 7 is said to be chaste and, if "Colette" can be taken at face value, th

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"up above" and "down below" alluded to phantasies of a sexual nature which occupied the patient's mind and, as suppressed desires, were not without a bearing on his neurosis (Freud Interpretation 322). The "up above" and "down below" references are to power relationships rather than love relationships. This emphasis on power connects the ideas of Foucault and Freud, although Foucault is, compared to Freud, a thoroughgoing feminist. Foucault seeks to transcend Freud's patriarchal, anti-homosexuality bias by arguing that while sexual liberation would a healthy sign of progress, society is, in fact, far from being as sexually liberated as its members--including Colette--believe it to be. Colette is writing a novel, not a Lesbian or feminist philosophy, but the underlying implication of her book is that the women who express their sexuality openly are indeed liberated from the conventional, patriarchal moral and social standards of sexuality, love, and power. Colette makes this position clear in her harsh condemnation of those women she calls "nuns" who live for "abnegation, needlework, housework" and taking "fanatical care of their man's . . . trousers" (Colette 20-21). Colette, writing in a sexually repressed time, probably saw h

Category: Literature - P