Chéri
The other side of the demi-monde — a kept woman rather than a working one, and the same reckoning with love and independence.
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The Vagabond
by Colette
A divorced music-hall performer is offered love and security, and has to decide what her independence is worth.
- 1910
About Colette
The story, briefly
Spoiler-freeRenée Néré is thirty-three, divorced from a painter who humiliated her, and supporting herself as a mime and dancer on the Paris music-hall stage. The work is hard and precarious, and it is entirely her own. When a wealthy admirer, Maxime Dufferein-Chautel, offers marriage and comfort, Renée has to weigh love against the self-possession she has built out of exhaustion and touring. Published in 1910, the year Colette divorced Willy, The Vagabond is her closest fictional transformation of her own years on the stage. (The full plot, including the ending, is below.)
The story, in more detail
Colette wrote The Vagabond out of the six years she spent earning her living in Paris music halls after leaving her first husband. Renée Néré is not Colette in any literal sense, but the trade is exact: the dressing rooms, the touring, the tired bodies, the mixture of degradation and freedom in performing for money. The novel took the material Colette knew from the inside and turned it into a first-person study of a woman deciding what she will and will not give up.[1]
The book is written as Renée's own account, and its real subject is less the romance than the argument she conducts with herself. Maxime is decent and the offer is genuine; the question is whether love is worth surrendering an independence bought at a high price. Colette lets Renée state the case for security honestly, and then lets her refuse it.[1]
The Vagabond has a sequel, The Shackle (L'Entrave, 1913), which follows Renée into the aftermath of that decision. Colette later adapted the novel for the stage, and it was filmed more than once, first in 1917 with her friend Musidora.[1]
The full plot
Renée Néré performs mime and dance at a Paris music hall, partnered on stage with Brague, a seasoned professional who treats the work as a trade. She is thirty-three and divorced from Adolphe Taillandy, a successful painter whose serial infidelities and lies wore the marriage away; she now lives alone and keeps herself on the uncertain income of the stage. She used to write novels and has stopped; she calls herself a literary woman who has gone to the bad, and says plainly that she no longer allows herself the luxury of writing. The life is tiring and insecure, and she guards it because it is hers.[1]
A wealthy admirer, Maxime Dufferein-Chautel, begins to court her seriously. He is kind, persistent, and offers what her first marriage counterfeited: love, money, an end to the grind. Renée is drawn to him and frightened of him in equal measure, because she can see that accepting means dissolving back into a man's life and losing the hard, plain autonomy she has assembled. She leaves on a long provincial tour with Brague, partly to decide at a distance.[1]
How it ends — spoilers ahead
On tour, away from Maxime's presence, Renée makes her choice. In a series of letters and then a final one, she refuses him — not because she doubts his love, but because she will not trade the self she has earned for the comfort of being kept, even generously and in marriage. She stays on the road. The novel ends with Renée choosing solitude and work over security, the freedom of the vagabond over the safety of the wife. The sequel, The Shackle, tests how durable that choice proves.
Themes and analysis
The artificial geranium
Before the performance, Renée’s reflection confronts her with questions she cannot settle. The opening music changes the pressure: familiar movements take over, and she trusts that her body will negotiate the staged falls safely. Raising an artificial flower belongs to this practiced world, where an invented action can produce real relief. Yet the dusty floor and rough audience remain visible. Her ease does not depend on forgetting the conditions of the job; it comes from working within a discipline that briefly protects her from the demands of self-examination.
The sea from the train
The sea interrupts a chapter crowded with exhausting work and anxious correspondence. Renée has been waiting for words from Max; suddenly she wants words of her own for water, sunlight and salt. The shift matters because her attention no longer answers an absent lover, even for a brief interval. Remembering him ends the absorption, but also allows her to recognize that she had forgotten him. The passing view offers no settled plan for her life. It makes another source of urgency imaginable, within the journey she is already undertaking.
Why we recommend it
A woman's independence, argued honestly
The novel makes the case for love and security fairly, then refuses it — a rare book that lets its heroine choose solitude and treats it as a win.
Colette's own stage years, transformed
The dressing rooms and touring are drawn from the life she was living, which gives the novel its unglamorous precision.
First-person Colette at full strength
Renée narrates her own deliberation, and the voice — wry, exact, self-aware — is one of Colette's finest.
What this book explores
The people in its pages
Renée Néré
Thirty-three, divorced, and earning her living as a music-hall mime — the narrator, weighing a second marriage against the independence she has paid for.
Maxime Dufferein-Chautel
The wealthy, decent admirer who offers Renée love and security — and, without meaning to, the loss of everything she has built alone.
Brague
Renée's stage partner and mime teacher — a professional who treats the music hall as a trade and keeps her honest about the work.
Bring it to book club
- Renée refuses a good man and a comfortable life. Is her choice liberation, fear, or both at once?
- How does writing the novel as Renée's own account change what we can trust about her self-assessment?
- The stage is both drudgery and freedom for Renée. How does the novel keep those two things true at the same time?
Timeline
1910
The Vagabond is published, the year Colette's divorce from Willy became final.
1913
The sequel, The Shackle (L'Entrave), continues Renée Néré's story.
1917
An early film adaptation is made with Colette's friend Musidora.
Book editions
Hardcover
- Hardcover
- Ollendorff
- 1910
Paperback
- Paperback
- Enid McLeod
Ebook
- Ebook
- Paperback
- Oxford University Press
- 2025
- 9780198881582
- Frances Egan
Reader reviews
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Break of Day
The later self-portrait in which the same choice — desire relinquished for autonomy — returns from the far end of a life.
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Gigi
A young woman refusing the arrangement made for her, where Renée is the grown woman who already walked away.
Read our takeThe Vagabond: frequently asked questions
Who wrote The Vagabond?
The French novelist Colette. La Vagabonde was published in 1910.
What is The Vagabond about?
Renée Néré, a thirty-three-year-old divorced woman supporting herself as a music-hall performer, is courted by a wealthy man offering marriage. The novel follows her decision between love and security on one side and hard-won independence on the other.
Is The Vagabond autobiographical?
In atmosphere and profession, strongly. Colette wrote it out of her own years earning a living on the Paris stage after leaving her first husband. Renée is a fictional character, not a literal self-portrait.
Is there a sequel to The Vagabond?
Yes. The Shackle (L'Entrave, 1913) continues Renée Néré's story and is usually read after this novel.
What does the title mean?
'La vagabonde' — the woman vagabond or wanderer. Renée embraces the word for the touring, unsettled, self-supporting life she chooses over marriage.
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References
References
The sources below include the primary text, editions, scholarship, archival materials, and other records that informed this page. They document The Vagabond, its publication, and its place in literary history.
2La Vagabonde — Ollendorff 1910, 57th edition
WebsiteWikisourceUsed forPrimary French text for Part One, Chapter I and Part Three, Chapter IX. Wikisource identifies the Ollendorff 1910, 57th edition; the new analysis does not claim to compare the first printing, Enid McLeod’s or Frances Egan’s translations, or independently establish events in Colette’s life.
3Société des amis de Colette — Chronology
WebsiteUsed forUsed to place The Vagabond within Colette's published work and verify its bibliographic context.
4Bibliothèque nationale de France — The Worlds of Colette
Exhibition catalogueUsed forUsed for independent biographical, archival, or historical context surrounding Colette's career and the period in which The Vagabond appeared.
5Library of Congress — Colette resource guide
WebsiteUsed forUsed to cross-check authorship, chronology, and the work's place in Colette's wider catalogue.
6Bibliothèque nationale de France — Colette: online resources
WebsiteUsed forUsed to verify Colette's bibliography and place The Vagabond within the broader chronology of Colette's career.
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Why these sources are here
The primary text is the baseline reference for every book page. Additional references document publication history, interpretation, and historical context where that evidence is available.
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