Claudine at School

I hope everyone had a lovely Christmas and New Year. Fed up with the BBC I found the old French TV version of. Claudine à l’École to watch. It’s reasonably easy to follow with the French subtitles if you know the book. It created a bit of a sensation when it first came out because of its ‘salacious’ content. Not that there is any graphic sex in it.

The book is by Colette known for her rather racy novels although originally published under the name of her husband Willy who employed an army of ghost writers to write his books for him. In the preface Colette writes:

I have told in Mes Apprentissages how, some two years after our marriage, therefore about 1895, Monsieur Willy said to me one day:

“You ought to jot down on paper some memories of the Primary School, I might be able to make something out of them.... Don’t be afraid of racy details.”

So the book is at least semi-autobiographical. It starts with the precocious 15 year old Claudine starting her last year at school (she is 16 in the film). They have a new severe headmistress Mmselle Sergent and her assistant the petite and totally adorable Aimée Lanthenay with the blonde hair and golden eyes. Everyone is immediately in love with Aimée including Claudine, Mmselle Sergent, the boys teacher M Duplessis and the lascivious Dr Duteutre (who is also school governor).

It is a fascinating account of sexual awakening in young girls, half children half grown-ups. They alternate between playing marbles and tossing their hair at the boys. Claudine is very bright and very self-assured making an unsuccessful attempt to seduce Aimée and having an almost mesmeric hold over her Aimée’s younger sister Luce who is in the same class.

There are lots of ‘racy’ bits particularly the regular passionate embraces of Sergent and Aimée, the tendency of Duteutre to continually find excuses to have to examine the girls and the flirtations of the male teachers in the boys school.

There is no graphic sex in the book, just hints at what the adults are up to so I had to imagine it. So I thought I would see if the AI image generator could produce some old looking photographs of the adventures of Aimée. I’ve put them in photo album https://similarworlds.com/JoAnon/photos?album=413553

Here are some stills from the film.

Dr Duteutre decides Claudine needs a detailed medical examination.



Claudines attempted seduction of Aimée



Mmselle Sergent’s successful seduction of Aimée