Examinations of Voice, Society and Feminism in the Lives and Contrastive Works of
Alfonsina Storni and Colette
Hali Kivari
Faculty Sponsor: Jennifer Law-Sullivan
Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, Oakland University
French novelist Sidonie Gabrielle Colette and Argentine poet Alfonsina Storni lived and
wrote oceans apart in societies as distinct from each other as these two women. While both
societies were in the throes of separate feminist movements, France was a world power centuries
old, while Argentina was barely out of its infancy as a former colony. There is an abundance of
literature available concerning Storni and Colette separately, and an equally abundant source of
research in feminism at the beginning of the twentieth century, but there is little available that
connects these two women and examines the striking similarities, as well as the glaring
differences, in their writing. More importantly, there is very little that seeks to answer the
question of why each woman chose to express herself and her defense of women in the venue
that she did. Why did Storni find her power in verse, while Colette chose the novel as her outlet?
This paper will seek to answer that question via examination of each woman in terms of the
historical and political background prevalent to her emergence as a writer and of the primary
works themselves that launched each woman’s literary career.
As different as these two women are, there is an underlying similarity in the feminist
themes of their writing. Both women demand a freedom of self-expression and via profound
examinations (and sometimes reversals) of gender-roles in society, examine the place of woman
in society. The question then becomes this: why is it that each woman responded to her struggle
against societal restrictions in the style of writing that she did? It is in this question that it
becomes incumbent to examine the similarities and differences in the poetry of Storni and the
prose of Colette, as well as to compare the cultural implications of their respective societies
which influenced the style and message of said writings.
Alfonsina Storni was born into a time of transformation and change in Argentina, at the
height of what is now called the “Liberal Age” of Argentina. As transitional and revolutionary as
the political climate was in Argentina during the time of Storni, it is no surprise that the literary
climate was also revolutionizing at the publishing of El dulce daño (1918), Irremediablemente
(1919), and Languidez (1920). The Modernist movement was drawing to a close, and that of the
Vanguard had yet to come to its full culmination, leaving a sort of gap in movements. This inbetween period is fiercely debated1 as to its nature as a completely separate movement (that of
posmodernismo) or as merely a later extension of its Modernist predecessor, but for the sake of
this investigation, the term posmodernismo, and all characteristics thereto pursuant – themes
examines “atypical [to modernism], such as the body, desire, and specifically gendered relations”
(Kuhnheim 21), for example - shall be used.
1
For further reading on this debate, please consult Kuhnheim’s Gender, Politics, and Poetry in Twentieth Century
Argentina.
Examining these three early collections separately, one begins with El dulce daño. This
collection begins with the poem “Así” (“Like-so”), which immediately sets the tone: “Hice el
libro así: / Gimiendo, llorando, soñando, ay de mí. (v. 1-2) I wrote the book like so: / Moaning,
crying, dreaming, woe is me. 2 (Obra poetica completa 75. Storni continues by juxtaposing “la
leona cruel” (“the cruel lioness”) and “la mariposa triste” (“the sad butterfly”), two contrasting
natures she finds in herself. She reflects “… jamás me pensé / que pudiera un día zarpar o
morder”(OPC 75), or “I never thought I could one day sail away or bite.” The butterfly, a symbol
that will reappear many times in this collection, is representative of the quiet, pleasing to look at,
insubstantial woman idealized by the traditional society from which Storni was desperate to
break free. The lioness is a manifestation of the more primal, aggressive, independent side of
Storni which society can never accept. This examination of the duality of her nature will
continue into future collections as Storni continues to struggle with the ideally subservient
woman propagated by a masculine society and the woman courageous enough to demand justice
for her gender.
In “Tu y yo” (“You and I”), the poet displays a real sense of isolation from a society to
whom she feels she is really more parallel than dissimilar: “Tu casa proyecta en mi casa, / De
tarde, alargdada, su sombra, / […] Igual a tus lirios, mis lirios, / Que iguales octubres enfloran…
(v. 36-42) Your house projects into my house, / In the afternoon its elongated shadow, / […]
Equal to your irises, my irises, / Which fill equal Octobers with flowers…” (OPC 81). This is
evidenced in her parallels of “equal to your courtyards” to “equal to your lilies” and “equal
doves” to “equal Octobers”. Also prevalent is a sense of being unknown or unrecognized by the
speaker’s contemporaries. In the lines “never have you seen my house / cut my roses,” there is a
distinct rebuke for a lack of understanding under which the speaker suffers, as well as a reproof
of the complete absence of an effort towards reconciling this distance. This poem speaks
especially of her intellectual peers, with whom she had to fight to prove herself worthy of respect
and consideration not as a woman but as a true contemporary regardless of gender; hers was a
time in which “women who wrote poetry – very few – generally belonged to a subspecies of
literature” (Jones 35).
Of course, no investigation of Storni’s early work would be complete without the iconic
“Tú me quieres blanca” (“You want me white”), the most vehement of her poems which
reproach the double standard for men and women in society: “Tú me quieres alba. / Me quieres
de espumas, / Me quieres de nácar. / […] Tú que hubiste todas (v. 1-3;15) You want me as dawn,
/ You want me made of foam, / You want me made of mother-of-pearl. / […] You who had
all…” (OPC 108). The double standard concerning sexual purity is obvious in the lines above.
The man who has “had all” (i.e. enjoyed sexual liberties afforded to him by his gender) wants an
idealized woman who is “white” and “chaste”; “a flower closed”. However, there is also a more
subtle disparage of the lessening of women in society to mere objects whose worth can be
calculated on so few factors as purity and proper comportment. There is a real exasperation in
the fact that the men in Storni’s society cannot recognize the complex and intellectual
contributions women had to offer, seeing them as nothing more substantial than “foam” and
“tenuous perfume”.
2
All translations, unless otherwise noted, are my own.
Storni’s next collection, Irremediablemente, follows only a year after its predecessor. In
first examining the poem “Soy esa flor” (“I am that flower”) from this collection, Storni’s
message can be most succinctly summarized in the poem’s final two lines: Soy esa flor perdida
que brota en tus riberas / Humilde y silenciosa todas las primaveras. (v. 9-10) I am that lost
flower which sprouts on your banks / Humble and silent every spring (OPC 136). Women, as
seen by society, are clearly portrayed as a flower; i.e. nothing more substantial than a fleeting
beauty that can only be appreciated for a season. It is important to also note the reference made
to the silence of flowers. The speaker, who needs to express herself and be heard, feels lost in a
society which had all but condemned women to a life in the background creates an especially
poignant sense of isolation here.
Storni’s better known, and perhaps more acerbic poem from this collection is “Hombre
pequeñito” (“Tiny little man”):
Estuve en tu jaula, hombre pequeñito,
I was in your cage, tiny little man,
Hombre pequeñito que jaula me das.
Tiny little man who gave me my cage.
Digo pequeñito porque no me entiendes.
I say tiny little because you do not
understand me,
Ni me entenderás.
Nor will you understand.
Tampoco te entiendo, pero mientras tanto
Ábreme la jaula que quiero escaper;
Nor do I understand you, but in the
meantime
Hombre pequeñito, te amé media hora,
Open that cage for me that I want to escape;
No me pidas más. (v. 5-12)
Tiny little man, I loved you half an hour,
Don’t ask me for more. (OPC 15)
This poem presents one of Storni’s most blatant outcries against the man of society who “jails”
and inhibits the woman. She implores to be released from the social and literary cage that man
(i.e. society) has created for her so that she might truly “soar.” Storni also notes (perhaps with
some sadness even) that her jailer will never really understand her, and she will never understand
him.
It is also important to observe in “Hombre pequeñito” the use of the diminutive “-ito” in
the Spanish text, as this suffix generally implies an unequal relationship between the addresser
and addressee; the way one might address a pet or a small child would be a fitting example of the
use of this suffix. Here, Storni is clearly calling attention to the inherent diminutiveness of the
man who thinks he is far superior to women and who thinks he is owed so much more by women
than he actually is. The irony, of course, is that the pet canary (here, Storni) is diminishing her
implied owner. It is her recognition of her own smallness and implied powerlessness in society
and her blatant refusal to be cowed by society’s measure of her – or any woman – that make this
irony even more pronounced. This role reversal in subjugation will reappear in the forthcoming
analysis of Colette.
The last of these early collections is Languidez, and the tone herein is more subdued. Her
most prevalent themes are perhaps best expressed in “Monotonía” (“Monotony”). “Cómo decir
este deseo de alma? / Un deseo divino me devora; / Pretendo hablar, pero se rompe y llora (v.13) How to express this soul’s desire? / A divine desire devours me; / Trying to speak, it breaks
and cries” (OPC 191). This poem presents a compelling image of one who is caught in the
numbingly mundane – perhaps of a traditionalist society which cannot appreciate such literary
genius from a woman – and is dying to break out. It also bespeaks a person dying to be able to
express herself, dying for recognition as an individual worth listening to, and dying for a voice in
a society whose ears are deaf to all but the prevailing masculine majority.
These three collections examined together could be viewed as a trilogy dedicated to the
three stages of passionate love: hope, disillusionment, and renunciation or resignation (Jones 65).
More broadly interpreted, however, these collections could indeed be viewed as stages of passion
– be it passion for love or change or justice or self-expression – itself: the strongest, most ardent
feelings of passion which are incited first and not yet tainted or dimmed by reality; followed by
the disillusionment of realizing that society and the world surrounding neither understand nor
share one’s passions; and finally, a subdued resignation that is the product of exhausting oneself
in pursuit of the passions that society cannot understand and consequently must diminish.
To understand the social and political climate for women in twentieth century France in
the pursuant examination of Colette, this investigation delvess into the twentieth century, the first
seven decades of which were “characterized by a combination of stasis and change, of tradition
and transformation” (Stephens 147). The political climate concerning women’s rights and the
place of the woman in society was being stirred but by World War One, little actual reform had
been realized and more broadly speaking, very little had been achieved thus far by the women’s
movement. Political authority was still the “prerogative of the male citizen” (Callahan/Curtis
222) and political sentiments toward women became downright anti-feminist, and the women
writing in this “post-1918 period” (Stephens 149) became a sort of force of resistance to this,
producing works in which “the relationship between gender, identity and power was interrogated
and an alternative vision of gender relations was articulated” (Stephens 149).
One of the most famous of these “alternate visions of gender relations” previously
mentioned is that presented in Colette’s Chéri, which chronicles the six-year love affair between
Léa, a courtesan approaching fifty, and Chéri, a man twenty-five years her junior. Although
Colette never directly affiliated herself with the suffrage movement - she was at most “lukewarm
when it came to protest” (Ozouf 172) – her works are perhaps some of the most lasting and
iconic accounts of role reversals and blatant questioning of gender roles in French society.
Throughout her works, Colette’s women are “intoxicated by their own strength” (Ozouf
162); Léa, by her own admission, trembles “with the pleasure of giving him [Chéri] orders”
(Colette3 175). Her men are “flat, unfaithful, fickle, devoid of status [and] always threatened with
imminent demise” (Ozouf 163). Chéri fits this description on all counts. He is portrayed as little
more than a “devil of a boy”(143), a “naughty kid” (143) obsessed with his own vanity and
appeal. A mere six months after his wedding, he is back in Léa’s bedroom. Not only does Chéri’s
behavior bespeak his own fickleness, it also serves as a demonstration of Léa’s great power in
their relationship and her role as the dominant partner. Even married as he is, and without any
3
All translations of Colette’s Chéri are those of Stanley Applebaum.
direct provocation from Léa herself, Chéri finds he must return to her. As far as status is
concerned, Léa has far more social standing than he, and she takes care to remind him of that:
“‘Call me ‘madame’ or ‘Léa’. I’m neither your chambermaid nor a pal of your own age’”
(Colette 53). She is clearly the dominant participant in the affair.
This dominance and authority which clearly belongs to Léa is immediately apparent from
the first pages of the novel. Chéri, painted as the impetuous, greedy, vain child, begs a pearl
necklace from Léa, who refuses this request with the mild exasperation of a parent and
admonishes her young beau that he’d best take care with said necklace. He reacts with all
petulance of any small child, stamping his foot and whining “‘I’ve had enough, no one here
looks after me! […] I’m reprimanded, I’m refused everything’” (13) This motif of the pearl
necklace continues throughout the novel, a tangible symbol of Chéri’s vanity and inability to
mature, and a blatant criticism from Colette of the aristocratic man.
Concerning his character, Chéri is comprised of devilishness and ugliness. This
devilishness presents itself in his selfishness, vanity, and indifference to anything beyond his
own desires. In her private thoughts, as well as aloud to Chéri himself on occasion, Léa refers to
him as a “graceful devil” (3), “handsome demon”(47), “fallen angel” (47), “nasty infant” (57),
“evil creature”(175), “heartless devil” (175), “big scoundrel” (175), etc. She muses about the
“satanic curve of his highly raised brows” (47) and laughs at him for his “sharp-tongue” (85).
Although he is physically beautiful, there is an inherent nastiness in Chéri that makes him ugly.
During one of their private moments, Léa reflects on his “harsh laughter,” wondering to herself
why it is that “he, the epitome of beauty [should be] so ugly when he laughs” (5). She concludes
aloud “’It’s because you look so vicious when you’re cheerful… You only laugh out of malice or
sarcasm. That makes you ugly. You’re often ugly” (5). Chéri, vain as a creature can be, and
rather than taking offense at this maligning of his character or good nature, responds angrily that
it’s not so; he is not ugly.
There is a recurring use of the hound as a comparison for Chéri which must also resonate
with the reader. Before the announcement of his impending nuptials, Léa thinks to herself “to
marry off Chéri… it’s hardly human… To hand over a girl to Chéri – why not fling a doe to the
hounds?” (9). As he sleeps, Léa listens to his “deep hunting-dog sighs” (41), and upon watching
him with Patron, compares him to a subservient hunting beast : “How malevolent he is! When he
laughs, he’s like a greyhound that’s going to bite…” (43). The irony here is that although the
hound is a very masculine beast, it is nothing more than an object of subjugation itself to
whichever master holds its leash. While Chéri may be the dominant member of society as
afforded to him by gender alone, it is Léa who truly has independent wealth, status, and of
course, power over Chéri.
To Colette’s view, the aristocratic man is little more than a devilish, childish animal. (The
working man she has some respect for, as evidenced by Chéri’s mutual friendship with Patron, a
trainer who owns a private gym.) Her disdain for the prevailing mentalities of society’s men with
regard to marriage is evidenced in her subtle disparagement and mockery of Chéri’s own views
of women. Speaking to Léa about his impending nuptials – for which he has little, if any, regard
– he is positively supercilious on the subject of Edmée, his wife-to-be: “’She’s got nothing to say
about it. I’m marrying her, aren’t I? She can just kiss the divine print of my feet and bless her
destiny’” (53). The conversation continues, and he succinctly sums up the men’s view of a
wife/woman in society: “’She loves me. She admires me. She says nothing’” (57). He even goes
so far as to remark to a friend during his hiatus from marriage that he really is a “free man,” as he
has “got her [Edmée] trained” (115).
Although unaffiliated as she was with the feminist movement, Colette shows a distinct
criticism of the subservient, apathetic woman of society. Charlotte Peloux, Léa’s oldest friend
and Chéri’s mother, is lauded by another character as a “woman of a bygone era” who neither
reads nor travels, cares only for her neighbors’ business, and lets her servants raise her own child
(27). Léa, of course, privately disdains this sort of woman, and during her visits to the Peloux
residence, prefers “to have the mother and son nap, granting her a wide-awake hour of mental
solitude in the heat, shade, and sun” (25).
Having arrived at the point in this investigation in which both Storni and Colette, as well
as the works that in essence launched each woman’s prospective literary careers, have been
thoroughly examined, we return to the prevailing question with which we started: why did each
woman choose to express herself in the venue that she did? Both of these women emerged as
writers in the midst of political and social revolution underscored by the feminist movement of
women determined to demand better for themselves. Both women struggled with an innate sense
of duality and of being torn between the acquiescent and compliant lady idealized by society and
the complex and fiercely intelligent woman fighting for recognition of her intellect. Both
struggled to find a place for themselves in a literary environment that belonged to their male
counterparts. Both struggled with an innate need for self-expression and a need to find not only a
voice, but more importantly, a society that would hear it. So the question remains: why did
Storni find her peace and power in verse, while Colette chose the novel as her outlet?
Even comparing their respective society does not afford the inquisitive mind any great or
discerning revelations. Poetry in France was “a uniquely male tradition” (Holmes 91) and had
been for centuries, with only a few small exceptions allowed via decidedly domestic themes. To
masculine society, women simply were not capable of the genius required to create poetry, due
to both a lack of proper education and a “natural inferiority which nothing could destroy”
(Holmes xiii). This explains in a rather straight-forward way why Colette chose the novel as her
vehicle of self-expression. However, in Argentina as well, poetry was also the intellectual
property of men. There were very few female poets, and those that existed were viewed as a
quaint novelty and no more than a subspecies of the poetic breed (Stephens 34). Knowing this
reveals no motivations for Storni’s embracing of poetry over prose, and in reality, seems to
further complicate the question.
The answer is found simply in the mentality and words of each writer herself. Colette
very intentionally took no stand alongside the feminists. When asked about her stand on the
movement in France, a young Colette replied, “Me, a feminist? You’re kidding. The suffragettes
disgust me” (Thurman xv). Storni was the opposite, an avid advocate and active supporter of the
movement via both her artistic and her political writings. In one of her many articles about the
place of women in society and women’s rights, Storni herself wrote “If every chief of state and
every head of the family were capable of knowing, then satisfying the needs of the people
underneath them [then there would be] no problem of feminism” (Nouzeilles/Montaldo 255). In
this vein, one concludes that Colette, aware of society’s limitations on acceptable literary venues
for a woman, and disinclined to become an active member of the previously mentioned
suffragettes, chose the novel as her outlet for expression for those reasons. Choosing to invade
the “masculine world of poetry” (Salgado 39) would have been a decidedly feminist action for
her. Storni, determined to thwart society and eager to join a movement that valued women, and
by which she could demand a voice for herself and others like her, chose the more volatile of the
two genres. This choice proved to be a battle that lasted her entire career; even now, most
general anthologies of South American poetry are dominated by men (Perricone 263). This
heavy featuring of male poets is not due to the fact that woman poets do not exist; rather they are
afforded very little recognition in light of their male counterparts. The fact “that she [Storni]
succeeded at all in becoming a poet is to her credit” (Salgado 38). Storni’s battle was well worth
it. Even today, the roar from her inner lioness still resounds, an unlikely but perfect complement
to the subtle murmur of Colette.
Bibliography
Brown, Jonathon. A Brief History of Argentina. New York: Facts on File, Inc. 2003. Print.
Callahan, Kevin, and Sarah Curtis. Views from the Margins: Creating Identities in Modern France.
Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2008. Print.
Colette. Chéri. 1920. Chéri: A Dual-Language Book. Trans. Appelbaum, Stanley Mineola: Dover
Publications, Inc., 2001. Print.
Cornick, Martyn, and Ceri Crossley. Problems in French History. Houndmills: Palgrave Publishers, 2000.
Print.
Finch, Alison. Woman's Writing in Nineteenth-Century France. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000. Print.
Gildea, Robert. The Past in French History. New Haven and London: Yale UP, 1994. Print.
Holmes, Diana, and First . French Woman's Writing 1848-1994. London: The Athlone Press, 1996. Print.
Jensen, Katharine Ann. Uneasy Possession:The Mother-Daughter Dilemma in French Women's Writings,
1671-1928. Newark: U of Delaware P, 2011. Print.
Jones, Sonia. Alfonsina Storni. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1979. Print.
Kuhnheim, Jill. Gender, Politics, and Poetry in Twentieth-Century Argentina. Gainesville: UP of Florida,
1996. Print
Molyneux, Maxine. "No God, no Boss, no Husband: Anarchist Feminism in Nineteenth-Century
Argentina." Latin American Perspectives 13.1, Latin America's Nineteenth-Century History (1986): pp.
119-145. Print.
Nouzeilles, Gabriela, and Graciela Montaldo. The Argentina Reader: Politics, Culture, and Society.
Durham: Duke UP, 2002. Print.
Ozouf, Mona. Woman's Words: Essays on French Singularity. Chicago: The U of Chicago P, 1997. Print.
Phillips, Rachel. Alfonsina Storni: From Poetess to Poet, London: Tamesis Books, Ltd., 1975. Print.
Salgado, María A. "Alfonsina Storni in her self-portraits: the woman and the poet"." Confluencia 7.2
(1992): pp. 37-46. Print.
Stephens, Sonya. A History of Woman's Writing in France. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000. Print.
Storni, Alfonsina. Obra poetica completa: poesias completas. Buenos Aires: Sociedad Editora Latina
America, 1968. Print.
Thurman, Judith. Secrets of the Flesh. New York City: Alfred A. Knopf-Random House, Inc., 1999.
Print.
von Munk Benton, Gabriele. "Recurring Themes in Alfonsina Storni's Poetry." Hispania 33.2 (1950): pp.
151-153. Print.