Claudine and Annie
The previous volume, and the source of the Annie who returns here as Claudine's counterpoint.
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The Sentimental Retreat
by Colette
The fifth and final Claudine book: Claudine spends a winter in her friend Annie's country house while her husband is away being treated, and the cycle closes in a minor key.
- 1907
About Colette
The story, briefly
Spoiler-freeWritten after Colette's separation from Willy, The Sentimental Retreat completes the Claudine cycle years after the original quartet. Claudine, older now and worn by love, spends a winter at Casamène, the country house where her friend Annie lives all year round, while her husband Renaud is away in the Engadine being treated. She takes stock of a life of exclusive, dependent passion, and Annie's very different appetites give her something to measure it against. Meditative and disenchanted where the early books were sharp and comic, it reads almost as Colette's own retrospective judgment on the series that made her famous. It first appeared in 1907, and was the first Claudine book published under her own name, as Colette Willy. (What's inside is described below.)
The story, in more detail
By 1907 Colette had left Willy and begun signing her own work, and The Sentimental Retreat carries the change on its title page: it appeared as by Colette Willy, not under Willy's name alone. The novel it introduces is tonally a world away from the early Claudine books — slower, sadder, and turned inward, more interested in what a life of love has cost than in the comedy of getting it.
There is little plot in the old sense. Claudine, separated for a time from her husband Renaud, goes to stay with her friend Annie in the country and moves through the seasons in a landscape rendered with Colette's close attention to weather, garden, and animal life. Renaud's grown son Marcel moves in for most of the winter, and the two women embody two tendencies the cycle has explored throughout: exclusive, dependent love on one side, freer sensory adventure on the other.
The book is often read as retrospective criticism of the series that precedes it — Claudine looking back on her own flamboyant youth with the disenchantment of experience. It closes the cycle less with an episode than with a mood: retreat, self-recovery, and the turn toward solitude.
What's inside
Claudine, older and no longer the sharp schoolgirl of the early novels, spends a winter at Casamène, her friend Annie's house in the country, while her husband Renaud is away being treated for his health. The book is the record of that winter: a season of memory and stock-taking, set in a rural landscape Colette renders with her characteristic attention to the physical world. Claudine weighs what a life organized around one exclusive, dependent love has given her and cost her.
The contrast between the two women — Claudine's consuming attachment against Annie's freer, more sensory approach to desire — gives the novel its quiet argument. Rather than resolving in an event, the book settles into a mood of disenchantment and self-recovery, the feminized landscape and the turning seasons carrying the meaning. It is the cycle's afterword: Claudine no longer performing her freedom, but reckoning with the price of her loves, and turning toward a solitude she chooses as much as suffers.
Why we recommend it
The cycle's reckoning
It reads almost as Colette's own judgment on the Claudine books — the disenchanted afterword to the series that made her name.
The first book under her own name
Published as by Colette Willy in 1907, it marks the point where authorship of Claudine began, publicly, to come home to her.
Landscape as feeling
With almost no plot, the novel makes weather, garden, and season carry the emotional weight — early evidence of the mature Colette.
What this book explores
The people in its pages
Claudine
Older and disenchanted, withdrawing to the country to reckon with a life of exclusive, dependent love — the heroine at the cycle's close.
Annie
Returning from the previous novel — her freer approach to desire the counterpoint to Claudine's consuming attachment.
Renaud
Claudine's husband, ailing and mostly absent — the love whose long cost the novel weighs.
Bring it to book club
- The novel reads as a retrospective on the earlier Claudine books. What is it judging, and does it judge Claudine kindly?
- Claudine and Annie embody two ways of loving. Which does the novel seem to prefer, if either?
- With almost no plot, how does Colette make landscape and season do the work of a story?
Timeline
1907
The Sentimental Retreat is published as by Colette Willy, completing the Claudine cycle — the first of the series under her own name.
Book editions
Hardcover
- Hardcover
- 1907
Paperback
- Paperback
- Margaret Crosland
Ebook
- Ebook
Reader reviews
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Claudine Married
Claudine's marriage at its height, against which this novel measures its cost.
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Break of Day
The later, fuller version of the same move — a woman withdrawing from love toward solitude and the land.
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The Sentimental Retreat: frequently asked questions
Who wrote The Sentimental Retreat?
Colette. Published in 1907, it was the first Claudine book to appear under her own name, as Colette Willy, rather than under her husband's name alone.
What is The Sentimental Retreat about?
An older Claudine withdraws to the countryside during a time apart from her ailing husband and takes stock of a life shaped by exclusive, dependent love. It is a meditation on aging, love's cost, and chosen solitude more than a plotted story.
Is it the last Claudine novel?
Yes. It is the fifth and final book of the cycle, written after the original four novels and closing Claudine's story.
Do I need to read the other Claudine books first?
It rewards them. The novel works as a retrospective on the whole cycle, and its power depends on knowing the Claudine of the earlier, sharper books.
Why is it also called Retreat from Love?
That is the title of the standard English translation of La Retraite sentimentale. Both names point to the book's subject: a withdrawal from the entanglements of love.