In the first pages of the third volume The Guermantes Way, the character Francoise was introduced as being unhappy and depressed after the family moved into a new home, to me it seems as if she misses her title (or I guess I think it was her Seniority and respect among the rest of the staff, She was actually treated like apart of the family) that she had in the old home in Combray too much. The narrator would seem as if he had no problem leaving because it was easy for him to leave the old and also laughed at her with ridicule because he felt that she was being too sensitive about the situation. But the two characters shared this sensitivity after the concierge didn’t give Francoise the respect she thought she deserved and after the narrator’s young footman made him feel the same way he goes to her, probably for sympathy but she wasn’t interested in what he had to say. The narrator then writes, “The alleged ‘sensitivity’ of neurotic people is matched by their egotism; they cannot abide the flaunting by others of the sufferings to which they pay an ever increasing attention in themselves.” I think Proust is saying that, what anxious people take sensitively is what they think of themselves, which is why they can’t stand when others flaunt that fact around. When they were already thinking about it themself. When Francoise looked in the other direction while the narrator suffered and vice-versa (when he tried to speak to her about their new house.) I felt that this encounter between the two was significant because in the proceeding pages there are instances where the reoccurring theme of Identity, but Identity through job and feminine titles. Like from pages 21 and 22, ‘“I meant to talk to their butler about it…What is it now they call him?” She broke off as though putting to herself a question of protocol, which she went on to answer with: ‘ Oh, of course, it’s Antoine they call him!’ as though Antoine had been a title. ‘He’s the one could tell me, but he’s quite the gentleman, he is, a great pedant, you’d think they’d cut his tongue out, or that he’d forgotten to learn to speak. He makes no reply when you talk to him,’”(Proust, 21) This is Francoise that said this and it makes me want to recall a time in the past book where she is referred to the title of her job. From my memory she is only called by her name and when she refers to Antonine “as though Antonine had been a title” I think she does this on purpose because she sees this person as a person and not just by his job. She places her views that a person with or with out the title of a “footman” or perhaps a “maid” is still a “footman” or a “maid” but simply identifying them with their real name conveys a sense of humanity and respect for that individual. On the following page, after Francoise talks about how the Duchess is address by her feminine name at the Guermantes Castle, but says its interesting to her that it’s the Duchess who is the Mayoress of those parts and I feel that its implied because it’s not the Duchess who is the mayor, it is only because of her husbands title that she acquires the name, there are those who actually work hard for their title and when individuals who do (such as Francoise, Antoine etc.) they deserves to be identified properly. Rather than those like the Duchess who doesn’t have to do anything. I find this theme of Identity through titles and names corolates with the narrators theme of iden

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