I could pretend that my reading of Colette’s novellas 'Gigi' and 'The Cat' came about as a direct result of my resolution to read more literature in translation this year, but that isn’t actually the case. These had been set as a book group read for at least the last six months and it’s just coincidence that they’ve turned up on the schedule now.

I’m coming to translations very warily, having had a bad experience the last time we read a French novel. The translation of 'Madame Bovary' that I acquired was appalling but it wasn’t until I compared it with those of the other members of the group that I realised that, by which time I’d been well and truly put off the work. This time there were no such difficulties, although there were one or two occasions when I suspected the translator had had problems trying to reconcile languages with such very different verb systems. No, the language translated fine. What I had a problem with this time was the translation of the culture; reading Colette was like reading about a society more alien to me than anything out of the wildest science fiction.

Although it comes second in the volume, 'The Cat' is actually the earlier of the two stories. It centres around a young man, Alain, who is engaged to Camille, but who really is in love with his cat. After Alain and Camille marry, they move temporarily into the ninth floor apartment of a friend, leaving the cat behind in the house they intend to move back to after alterations. Both Alain and the cat pine and inevitably the cat moves into the apartment. From this point there is really no hope for the young couple. While Alain has a physical relationship with Camille the only meaningful emotional relationship he has is with the animal. Eventually, unable to communicate with her husband, Camille gives way to her jealousy and pushes the cat off the balcony. (Personally, I think she pushed the wrong one, and I hate cats!) The cat survives, but the marriage does not.

'Gigi' is much better known, if only because of the film, which I notice TCM are showing on Sunday. Gigi is a fifteen year old school girl being brought up by her Grandmother and her Great-Aunt to be a rich man’s mistress. One of them actually says that marriage isn’t done in their family. (Unfortunately, I've lent my copy to a friend, so I can’t quote accurately.) The child has to learn all the rules that will enable her to fill this position, rules to do with eating, with which jewels to accept, with how to dress, rules, rules, rules. There’s even some discussion as to the best way to attempt suicide when eventually cast aside. A frequent visitor to the household is Gaston, a typical example of the very sort of man Gigi is being groomed to attract. And, indeed, he offers her precisely this life and she rejects it. She says, quite bluntly, that she doesn’t want the advantages of coming to his bed now when they carry with them the inevitability of later rejection. And, when he protests that he loves her, she really lets fly with the only remark I understood. I wish I could quote it accurately, but the general idea is that it’s a peculiar sort of love that could wish the loved one the eventual misery that the position of mistress entails.

I am really left floundering by these stories. It isn’t the fact that they are tales of self-love and self-gratification - I can understand that. What I can’t understand is the point of view that says that it is all right to go all out for this at the expense of other people - especially if you’re a man. Oh yes, I know that as many British feel this way as French or as members of any other nation, for that matter, no it’s the social acceptance of it that leaves me standing there open-mouthed. I can appreciate the fine writing: the wonderful use of irony in 'Gigi' and the superb way Colette turns the reader’s sympathies in 'The Cat'. But I can’t comprehend a society that seems to find what she is writing about inevitable and acceptable. At the moment I feel the gap stretching between me and the people about whom Colette is writing to be a million times wider than the distance from one side of the Channel to the other. This isn’t to say that I think Colette herself agrees with the life she outlines, there is evidence in both texts that she feels that the woman’s position is demeaning but I can’t pretend that reading the stories didn’t make me look more carefully at the articles in last weekend’s papers about the current French President and ask whether or not anything has changed.

This isn’t what I was hoping for when I decided I wanted to read more novels in translation. I wanted to gain a greater understanding of the societies about which I read, not to find that I was developing an ever stronger sense of alienation. Maybe I should move away from French writers for a time and try writers from some other culture. Any suggestions?

This is a test to see what the format looks like.