The Pure and the Impure

When this work of Colette's first appeared in France, it carried the title of Ces Plaisirs... and the pleasures to which Colette was referring were those "which are lightly called physical," meaning, Miss Flanner says, "it was Colette's desire to add to the limited treasure of truthful insights into love, into the mysteries of love in its many forms. And in Ces Plaisirs... she used her customary semifictional formula to report on the behavior, the mores, reflexes, instincts of women, especially as sentient, desiring creatures drawn to similarities and event to substitutes."