Missy or Max? Tu or vous?

The “tu / vous” distinction is very important in French, as a measure of intimacy between speakers and writers. Traditionally, “tu” was used only by adults to children, between close relatives, intimate friends, and lovers. Nowadays, the rigid distinction is easing, and many young people instantly use “tu” with each other, dispensing with that awkward step in a friendship of progressing from “vous” to “tu”. In the “Claudine” novels, the narrator reveals that, although she scandalizes polite society by saying “tu” to acquaintances, she never uses the familiar “tu” with her husband. In this way, the formal “vous” is a sort of erotic linguistic caress between the couple (Claudine en Ménage / Claudine Married).

In her letters to her lover Missy (“Lettres à Missy” edited by Samia Bordji and Frédéric Maget), Colette uses both “tu” and “vous” — often veering from one to the other in the same letter, or even the same paragraph, in a haphazard fashion. She wrote many of her letters late at night, exhausted after an evening’s performance in the mime play “La Chair” (Flesh) and just before going to bed. Most of the letters begin with her using “tu”. Perhaps Colette was so tired that she used “vous” by accident, but that’s an odd mistake to make with a lover — wouldn’t you always use “tu” for a lover, and always think of them (and write to them) using “tu”?

Similarly to the “tu / vous” distinction, in French you have to decide whether to use a feminine “you” or a masculine “you”. If you want to call someone “my darling”, you can say “ma chérie” my (feminine) darling, or “mon cheri”, my (masculine) darling. Unfortunately, the French language allows for no comfortable gender ambiguity, as there is in English!

In the same way that she uses both “tu” and “vous” to Missy, Colette addresses her masculine lover, for whom drag was a way of life, in the feminine, and calls her “ma chérie” most of the time. However, she does write “mon cheri” now and then, and sometimes even uses both “ma chérie” and “mon cheri” — addressing Missy as a woman and as a man — in the same letter. Does this mean that Colette thought of Missy as a woman most of the time, and occasionally as a man? I wish I could ask her. More musings on the mysterious Missy in the next post!