The Shackle

The Vagabond ended with Renée Néré refusing a comfortable marriage to keep her hard-won independence. The Shackle picks her up some years later, released from performing by money she did not have before, and finds that freedom without work or purpose has become its own kind of drift. Colette wrote the sequel to test the earlier book's triumphant solitude against the pull of desire, and she did not let Renée win a second time.

On the Riviera, Renée falls in with May and her lover Jean, and gradually displaces May in Jean's life. The affair that follows is possessive, jealous, and unequal, and Renée — who once guarded her autonomy against a kind and generous suitor — surrenders to a harder man and a smaller life. The novel watches her choose the shackle knowingly, which is what makes it bleaker than its predecessor.

The Shackle is often read as Colette's correction of her own romanticism: the free woman of 1910 shown, in 1913, accepting dependence not because she is deceived but because desire outweighs the freedom she defended. It is a minor-key companion to The Vagabond, and best read after it.

Renée Néré, no longer performing, lives on an inheritance and moves among a loose set of acquaintances on the Côte d'Azur. Idle and restless, she observes the affair between May, a dependent young woman, and Jean, an attractive, self-absorbed man of means. Drawn to Jean and half-bored, half-hungry for feeling, Renée lets an attraction develop that she knows will cost May her place.

Renée and Jean become lovers, and the relationship hardens into something jealous and unequal. The independence Renée defended so fiercely in The Vagabond gives way to a possessive attachment in which she is the one bound. She recognizes the trap as she enters it, measuring her surrender against the freedom she once chose, and goes in anyway.