a book by Collette

I just finished reading The Vagabond by Collette.  She portrays a female divorcee in France, not sure of the year but that doesn't really matter so much.  The divorcee, Renee, is a player in a revue.  She lives alone with her little dog and entertains friends sporadically.  She falls in love with an admirer from the revue, a wealthy gentlemen with 'no visible means' of employment but plenty of money.  Odd how one usually makes a case for wealthy gentlemen, even those pursuing women from the theatre. 
Renee makes it difficult for her admirer, whom she refers to as 'the Big Noodle' because he is like many men she's observed at the performances.  They make mistresses of women such as herself and while she doesn't consider that she is a particularly desirable candidate for this, she falls in love with him after much pursuit.
Renee convinces 'the Big Noodle' to wait for her when she goes on tour with her troupe.  While she is away, it becomes obvious to her that this will never become the enchanting romance she and her lover dream of.  She finds that she has been damaged emotionally by her first marriage because her husband was unfaithful.  Her concept of what love and marriage should be is forever marred and she is too cynical to believe that the gentlemen who offers her marriage is going to remain true to her. 
I found the book quite vivid with descriptions of every day things but when Collette refers to 'a silky mouse' I found that her images, though quite poetic in their visual references, were, like the character Renee, not quite true to their being.  Renee does love the theater.  She describes herself as 'being alive' when she is on the stage and is able to shut out the audience just so she can live in the moment of the performance.  All outside the stage are in another world. 
Collette does not opt for the neat and tidy approach in her story.  She does not go for the 'happily ever after' concept but does go on for many pages of effusive script on the 'being in love' idea only to smash it like a bug with the idea that Renee cannot accept the promise of her lover to love her always, no matter what comes along.  All it takes is for Renee to see a snapshot of him with a young female tennis partner and she is skeptical of the idea of their lives in marriage.  She doesn't accept it. 
Collette does not describe at all how the lover feels when he realizes that Renee will not marry him.  He has waited for her during the forty days of her tour and written consistently, as has Renee.  When Renee tells him that she will not always be the woman she is at 34, he tells her he does not care, that it is she he loves.  She does not believe it and the romance ends.
I didn't find the ending of this book to be satisfactory.  While it is right to express one's doubts and fears about love, one has always the duty to believe in the fact it exists.  It is easy to revel in the happiness it brings, but to cloud the future with 'what ifs' as does Renee with Max, her lover, only serves to justify the ending of the romance because Renee has not the faith to live it and believe in it, to accept it for what it is.  She would rather stick with her stage career, as she sees other women, older than her, who have done so, who have lived a colorful life singing opera in Saigon, pursuing alternative lifestyles.  She sees that she can accept her career, but she cannot accept love everlasting, because that she does not believe in.  She was disappointed once and for her, it will happen again.
I find this personal discovery of Renee unsatisfactory.  Always she was uncomfortable with the courtship of Max and only when he stirred her passion did she respond to him.  Once she did, she was hooked on the thrill of his attention to her.  Away from it she believed that this is all it was, silly passion not likely to enable her to sustain herself throughout the rest of her life like a career in the theater would, where she could adapt the role to her interpretation of it.  She couldn't interpret growing old with Max.  Collette has portrayed a woman scorned who is unable to 'get over it'.  My only thought about Renee is that she should have tried to 'get over' her past life and unhappy marriage and go with the bliss of the new romance, to believe in it and give it her best, which she doesnt seem to think she is capable of doing.  I found this disappointing to say the least.  She was more interested in performing than actually living her life with someone who loved her.  She didn't believe he always would love her and though he offered her marriage, she rejected it.  She wasn't about to be a kept woman and that made it impossible for her to see into what her life could have been had she accepted his proposal.  I found her disappointing, accepting that she was forever skeptical of true love.  It is my belief that one accepts love for what it is, something two people share.