, love--all of these are revealed only through the eyes of the narrator (Colette fictionalized), an often cynical, but occasionally idealistic, young novelist/journalist, seeking no relationship or even much communication with others: "I exchanged nods with my unknown hosts, who, thank God, seemed to be as little inclined as I was for any friendlier exchange" (Colette 4). She becomes in the book far more the observer of others' seeking love and pleasure than her own seeker. She has no deep relationship herself, either in sex or love, and seems to generally hold herself above the fray where she can safely critique and pity others for their failure to find love or even much pleasure. The ambiguity of the sexuality of her realm is introduced immediately when one guest appears and disappears before she can determine if it were "a man or a woman" (Colette 4). From the opening scene, undiluted, unrestricted pleasure (from drugs to sex of every blend to alcohol to the luxury of expensive material surroundings) would seem to be the medium of the narrator's (Colette's) world, but in fact the reader soon learns that there is little real pleasure to be found here, much less happiness derived from that pleasure. For all the emphasis on pleasure, the prevailing emotional or psychological climate is one of sadness, not happiness, or even satisfaction. Charlotte typifies this sadness, in her concern for the sick young man, in her being "always afraid" (Colette 9), in the fact that for all her possessions and experience, she is "not free" (Colette 13).
This is not to say that Colette judges any sexual act or inclination itself. As Janet Flanner writes in her Introduction, Colette accepted "the naturalness of sex wherever found or however fragmented and reapportioned" (Colette "Introduction"). Colette's liberated, feminist view suggests that Lesbianism and the general freedom of woman's sexual expression, the freedom of seeking pleasure and love bet...