Celia avitia

Close reading for Sam’s seminar

Page 393-394

I decided to do my close reading on pages 393-394, and a little on 213. In search of lost time is based on insecurities and jealousy. In the first book he is obsessed with his mother. Swann and Odette’s relationship depicted in “swann in love”, Swann searched all over for Odette when she wasn’t were she was suppose to be. This Theme is all over the novel and the movie “la captive”.

The narrator left Albertine at home so he can attend the Salon at Mme Verdurin’s. “I wanted to leave, but M. de Charlus having expressed his intentions of going in search of Morel, Brichot detained us.” (393) The narrator is trying to leave but he is talking to M. de Charlus about inviting Morel and Brichot to the party. Morel is Charlus new obsession.

“Moreover, the certainty that when I went home I should find Albertine there, a certainty as absolute as that which I had felt in the afternoon that she would return home from the Trocadero, made me at this moment as little impatient to see her as I had been then”. In this line the narrator is comparing how he feels now to how he felt when Albertine returned home from Trocadero on page 213. On page 213 he is talking about how having a women in the house changes the energy from being negative to positive energy. He even says, “It was the calm that is born of family feeling and domestic bliss”

This page really confuses me because most of the time in this novel he is talking about how he doesn’t love Albertine. On page 394 “I was terrified that she had already conceived a plan to leave me”. So now he is returning to how he really feels. It’s not the “domestic bliss” he was talking about earlier. He doesn’t have a reason to think that she’s hatching this plan; it’s his jealousy messing with him. The next line he says “this suspicion made it all the more necessary for me to prolong our life together until such time as I should have recovered my serenity”. (394) This line shows that he wants to be the one breaking up. He doesn’t want to be caught off guard and be the dumpy.

“Forestalling my plan to break up with her, in order to make her chains seem lighter until I could put my intention into practice without too much pain, the shrewd thing to do”. (394) This quote shows the games that he is playing. He doesn’t want her to break up with him; he talks about how much he misses her back on page 393. “Lighting up her chains” is referring to his obsession with her. He stalks her throw out this volume and he shown in the movie. So he’s going to give her a little bit of freedom so that she will want to stay. He then talks about how he was going to get Albertine to understand that it was his idea to leave her in in the first place.

Flora Tempel

The Fugitive, pgs 834-839

In the final pages of the second chapter of The Fugitive, Andree reveals extensive details to the narrator about Albertine’s personal life after her death. As Andree completes the story of Albertine’s adult life, the narrator pieces together important points and contemplates the meaning of the new information that has been revealed to him. The passage begins at the bottom of page 834.

But above all we must remember this: on the one hand, lying is often a trait of character; on the other hand, in women who would not otherwise be liars, it is a natural defense, improvised at first, then more and more organized, against that sudden danger which would be capable of destroying a life: love.

This passage starts with a compelling argument on the origin of lying, at least among women, according to Proust. He claims that lying is character trait, which begins the theme of this passage on the idea of character. He makes a rather sexist statement that women who are not naturally liars begin to lie to protect themselves from love. Apparently love destroys lives, which we have seen throughout the novel.

Furthermore it is not by mere chance that sensitive, intellectual men invariably give themselves to insensitive and inferior women, and moreover remain attached to them, and that the proof that they are not loved does not in the least cure them of the urge to sacrifice everything to keep such a woman with them. If I say that such men need to suffer, I am saying something that is accurate while suppressing the preliminary truths which make that need – involuntary in a sense – to suffer a perfectly understandable consequence of those truths.

The narrator speaks of men like himself, but as he suggests that these men need to suffer, it becomes clear that perhaps the person speaking is really Proust. Perhaps these are things that he has observed in people around him? Perhaps he is also a sensitive intellectual and has experienced these suffering and decided that they serve a purpose? Whatever that purpose is, he declines to speak on what it is and why it is necessary.

Not to mention the fact that, all-round natures being rare, a man who is highly sensitive and highly intellectual will generally have little will power, will be the plaything of habit and of that fear of suffering – and that in these conditions he will never be prepared to repudiate the woman who does not love him. One may be surprised that he should be content with so little love, but one ought rather to picture to oneself the anguish that may be caused him by the love which he himself feels. An anguish which one ought not to pity unduly, for those terrible commotions that are caused by an unrequited love, by the departure or death of a mistress, are like those attacks of paralysis which at first leave us helpless, but after which the muscles tend gradually to recover their vital elasticity and energy.

This is an odd third person perspective on everything that we have seen happen in the novel, even referencing Albertine’s death. The narrator’s affair with Albertine is defined by these themes. The narrator is obsessed with habit, which feeds his obsession with Albertine and leads to his indecisiveness on the relationship. He couldn’t possibly marry her, he must marry her, he doesn’t love her but can’t leave her… he relies on Albertine’s presence in his life, which makes him unable to part from her. And yet he suffers greatly from his unhealthy love and obsession with her. But as we see later in The Fugitive, he does begin to recover.

What is more, this anguish does not lack compensation. These sensitive and intellectual persons are as a rule little inclined to falsehood. It takes them all the more unawares in that, however intelligent they may be, they live in a world of the possible, live in the anguish which a woman has just inflicted on them rather than in the clear perception of what she wanted, what she did, what she loved, a perception granted chiefly to self-willed which need it in order to prepare against the future instead of lamenting the past. And so these persons feel that they are betrayed without quite knowing how. Wherefore the mediocre woman whom we are astonished to see them loving enriches the universe for them far more than an intelligent woman would have done. Behind each of her words, they find that a lie is lurking, behind each house to which she says that she has gone, another house, behind each action, each person, another action, another person. Of course they do not know what or whom, they do not have the energy, would not perhaps find it possible, to discover. A lying woman, by an extremely simple trick, can beguile, without taking the trouble to change her method, any number of people and, what is more, the very person who ought to have discovered the trick. All this confronts the sensitive intellectual with a universe full of depths which his jealousy longs to plumb and which are not without interest to his intelligence.

This perfectly represents so many of the interactions men have with women in the novel. The narrator questions Albertine’s every word, every action. Swann chases Odette through the city, and knocks on the wrong window in her building, questioning every house, and person. And yet when the truth comes to them, they are often blind to see it. The narrator also claims that he, as a sensitive intellectual, is not inclined to falsehood. This seems like an interesting interjection by Proust.

Without being precisely the man of that category, I was going to learn, now that Albertine was dead, the secret of her life. Here again, do not these indiscretions which come to light only after a person’s life on earth is ended prove that nobody really believes in a future life? If these indiscretions are true, one ought to fear the resentment of a woman whose actions one reveals fully as much in anticipation of meeting her in heaven as on feared it while she was alive and one felt bound to keep her secrets. And if these indiscretions are false, invented because she is no longer present to contradict them, one ought to be even more afraid of the dead woman’s wrath if one believed in heaven. But no one really does believe in it.

This particular paragraph is quite odd. First, the narrator states that he wasn’t necessarily describing himself in the previous section. But everything from major themes to subtle references suggests that he is. This confirms to me that Proust was really the speaker in that section. Second, he has this odd little sidetrack on the validity of the idea of afterlife. I’m not really sure what to make of it. He highlights the contradictory issues with the idea, but ends with an irrefutable statement, which seems counterproductive.

On the whole, I did not understand any better than before why Albertine had left me. If the face of a woman can with difficulty be grasped by the eyes, which cannot take in the whole of its mobile surface, or by the lips, or still less by the memory, if it is shrouded in obscurity according to her social position, according to the level at which we are situated, how much thicker is the veil drawn between those of her actions which we see and her motives!

The narrator continues with his interest in what someone’s eyes tell us, but also suggests that the reliability of memory might be dependent on the woman’s social position and the narrator’s. This continues the sexism and classism that has defined the novel.

Motives are situated at a deeper level, which we do not perceive, and moreover engender actions other than those of which we are aware and often in absolute contradiction to them. When has there not been some man in public life, regarded as a saint by his friends, who is discovered to have forged documents, robbed the State, betrayed his country? How often is a great nobleman robbed by a steward whom he has brought up from childhood, ready to swear that he is an excellent man, as possibly he was! And how impenetrable does it become, this curtain that screens another’s motives, if we are in love with that person, for it clouds our judgment and also obscures the actions of one who, feeling that she is loved, ceases suddenly to set any store by what otherwise would have seemed to her important, such as wealth for example.

This statement on the meaning of motives rings very true. They often are subconscious and contradict our normal opinions. It’s interesting that he chooses wealth as the important marker of value. This section of The Fugitive and the final chapter highlight wealth and the machinations of wealth among the nobility more than anywhere else in the novel. The slight reference to the Dreyfus case – “… discovered to have… betrayed his country?” – also continues to confirm that this passage is entrenched in the plot of the novel. The next section of this paragraph meditates on the actions of this hypothetical woman.

Perhaps it also induces her to feign to some extent this scorn for wealth in the hope of obtaining more by making us suffer. The bargaining instinct may also enter into everything else; and even actual incidents in her life and intrigue which she has confided to no one for fear of its being revealed to us, which many people might for all that have discovered had they felt the same passionate desire to know it as we ourselves while preserving a greater equanimity of mind and arousing fewer suspicions in the guilty party, an intrigue of which certain people have in fact not been unaware – but people whom we do not know and would not know how to find. And among all these reasons for her adopting an inexplicable attitude towards us, we must include those idiosyncrasies of character which impel people, whether from indifference to their own interests, or from hatred, or from love of freedom, or an impulse of anger, or from fear of what certain people will think, to do the opposite of what we expected. And then there are the differences of environment, of upbringing, in which we refuse to believe because, when we are talking together, they are effaced by our words, but which return when we are apart to direct the actions of each of us from so opposite a point of view that no true meeting of minds is possible.

Most interesting in this rambling section is the highlight on the idiosyncrasies of character. There really are so many reasons for motivation, and Proust successfully shows us many that are the most common and important to the story. He also touches on the nature versus nurture debate, which many people do refuse to believe. But I love how he ends this section by stating that, no matter how productive a conversation might have seemed, we all experience it differently because of our own point of view, and it can sometimes result in an inability to come together.

“Anyhow there’s no need to seek out all these explanations,” Andree went on. “Heaven knows I was fond of Albertine, and she really was a nice creature, but, especially after she had typhoid (a year before you first met us all), she was an absolute madcap. All of a sudden she would get sick of what she was doing, all her plans would have to be changed that very minute, and she herself probably couldn’t say why.” […]

And I told myself there was this much truth in what Andree said: that if differences of minds account for the different impressions produced by one person and another by the same work, and differences of feeling account for the impossibility of captivating a person who does not love you, there are also differences between characters, peculiarities in a single character, which are also motives for action. Then I ceased to think about this explanation and said to myself how difficult it is to know the truth in this world.

I love the way Proust ends this meditation on the meaning of character. He simply sums up the problem as unsolvable: every single character has their own motivations, and sometimes multiple contradictory ones. There’s something meaningful in the way he describes the people he is talking about here as “characters”. He could have just as easily said “a person” or “people”, or any other way to denote the people in the narrator’s “real” life. But Proust chooses to call them characters. I feel that in this moment, towards the end of his masterpiece, where the text is not a finely edited, Proust threw in a statement on how he creates characters and why they act they way they do in the work. For me, saying, “motives for action” confirms that he is speaking about he process of creating the characters. If he had been speaking as the narrator character, he might have chosen a different phrasing that places the line more firmly in the literary tone of the novel. Rather, he sounds like an author, word for word. It’s a beautiful thing to find hidden in the pages of a vast work. And he ends with a simple fact that every writer knows: it really is difficult to know the truth in this world.

Terra Heatherly-Norton

5/16/15

Closed Reading

“It was not that I did not still love Albertine, but I no longer loved her in the same fashion as in the final phase. No it was in the fashion of the earlier days, when everything connected with her, places or people, made me feel a curiosity in which there was more charm than suffering…” – Pg 753

Proust is processing his emotions about Albertine; he tries throughout the book to rationalize why their relationship is ending without taking any responsibility for its demise. In this specific passage Proust is feeling a heightened sense of infatuation for Albertine. He interprets this emotion as the feeling of new love, as oppose to the “final phase” of love he previously felt for her. This is an extremely common and relatable thing that happens to couples as they break up. The security the lovers felt is gone, most people cope with this new sense of vulnerability by reinvesting themselves into the failing relationship, seeking comfort in the familiar. The strength of emotion Proust feels overwhelms him, so instead of dealing with them he redirects. Albertine becomes the manifestation of his pleasures, insecurities, and anything else he seeks/feels; he views his obsession as affection. In actuality I think Proust is panicking, he is losing control of a situation he had previously felt comfortable in. These new feelings for Albertine are simply Proust grasping for control over a situation he never had the upper hand in. He feels as through Albertine is abandoning him, which makes him want her more than ever because as we know, Proust is all about the chase.

In the previous chapter Proust is convinced Albertine is a lesbian, he follows her around, is suspicious of her every move and takes every compliment she gives to girls with a grain of salt. He is feeling rejected by Albertine, their relationship is in shambles as it has been for a while now and Proust is searching for reasons outside of himself to justify why it is failing. Albertine being a lesbian is a blame free route Proust’s mind takes, not only keeping his inflated ego intact but also painting Albertine as the villain. In his mind it is her lack of moral compass and shameful promiscuity are the reasons Albertine does not love him anymore.

So now Proust is stuck in the obsessive phase of rejection, he sees people and places and associates them with Albertine even with no real connections. He feels a “curiosity in which there was more charm than suffering.” This line is a bit confusing, but what I think he is trying say is that remembering Albertine, finding her is all of his surroundings are not all unpleasant memories and feelings. Proust is essentially reminiscing about the love of his life. While these memories may be painful he also experienced great pleasure at the time. Proust is all about involuntary memory his breakup with Albertine is bringing up hundreds of early memories from when he saw her at the park for the first time, to the theater they went to together as teenagers. Proust is wallowing in this, he absorbs his own memories better than any outside influence he is grieving but with grief comes nostalgia. Nostalgia is a horrible thing to feel because the picture it paints is always rosier than the actual event. Proust can recall a very normal walk to the park with Albertine as the most glorious of days with the sun shining, her skin glowing, and birds chirping in a merry way. But in actuality they were fighting about something and it were 52 with a slight drizzle.

“…And indeed I was well aware now that before I forgot her altogether, before I got back to my initial stage of indifference, I should have to traverse in the opposite direction, like a traveler who returns by the same route to his starting point, all sentiments through which I had passed before arriving at my great love…”- Pg 753

I found this quote extremely insightful and out of character for Proust, at a time in which Europe (and most of the western world) was focused on progression Proust states that he is regressing to eventually progress. He is falling out of love and is painfully aware of it; Proust is reveling and analyzing his own grieving process. This quote is one of the most profound conclusions he comes to regarding Albertine. He observes that he feeling for her must regain their strength before they can diminish completely. He needs to feel everything for Albertine deeply and fully before the feelings will dissolve. Proust is a processor, he observes quietly while a windstorm of thought rips through his psyche he describes his feelings, comparing them to “a traveler who returns by the same route to his starting point.” It seems to me like Proust is saying in order to truly not care about someone anymore you must fall in love with them again reflecting all the way back to the beginning because before the beginning there wasn’t any emotion at all. One must truly understand the feeling they felt in the past and the reasons for these feeling before they can truly let go.

“…But these stages, these moments of the past are not immobile; they have retained the tremendous force, the happy ignorance of the hope that was then soaring towards a time which has now become the past, but which a hallucination makes us for a moment mistake retrospectively for the future.” -Pg 753

Proust describes the nostalgia he feels as the mistaken feeling of hope, he is observing that as he relives moments of his and Albertine love he is filled with the feelings of those times and associates them with present day circumstance. Proust depends on others for his own happiness; he has many developmental and physical health problems resulting in a recluse and insignificant existence. This makes it so he is extremely impressionable and is affected by every outside experience deeply, and analyzes it to death in his ample free time. His entire world is Albertine, he has spent such a large part of his life chasing her, courting her, and trying to keep her. It seems he doesn’t quite know what to do with himself now that she left him. He feels powerless and empty, so he fills himself with the memories of their time together. He nestles himself in the comforting nest of memory avoiding the present at all costs. Because if Proust were to face his situation head on at this point in his mental process he would see that he has lost the only thing that he had thought brought real meaning to his life, he lost his purpose.

In the end Proust is a heart broken man trying to make sense of a world that he no longer understands. He fails to look outside himself for perspective but also fails to look within for faults. He created his own obstacles, fueled by his ego and clouded by insecurities Proust desperately searches for answers but fails to see he created the problem.

Haley VandenHazel

In Search of Lost Time

Close Reading

14 May 2015

To begin, I think it’s noteworthy to remember that this edition of The Fugitive is not only written by Proust but translated and revised by others. Initially I found this aggravating that Proust’s death stopped him from making the final edits of his last three volumes. But then I think maybe it would have been his last laugh; giving us yet another layer or perspective to sort through. After a bit of research, I found that the most recent edition of the title is Albertine Disparu; which translated into English means Albertine Gone. Obviously, our translation today has rather translated the initial title. In an online Geocity archive, the author quotes, “On a fairly superficial level, the title chosen by the translators may seem misleading: it is only for the first few dozen pages that we think that Albertine has run away. But then both the French title and The Fugitive have a deeper meaning, as the narrator’s memories of his lover begin to disappear from his imagination, becoming fugitive thoughts.”[1]

When it comes to the themes in Proust, they all seem to be facilitated through the narrator’s experiences with love. In my analysis of the narrator’s comprehensive view of love; I believe he would say that love is good in that it is beautiful, breath-taking, motivating, gratifying, and exhilarating. And that love is bad in that is horrifying, painful, destructive, and all-consuming. But more than anything, the narrator would say that it is strong and it is enduring; leaving an impact on the way one sees the world forever. But like everything, it is ever-moving and ever-changing. All of this movement appears to contribute to the theme between The Captive and The Fugitive. There seems to be this ebb and flow between enduring and overcoming his loss. We see progress then we see retreat; “I did not understand any better than before why Albertine had left me” (837).

Up to this volume, we see loves acceleration, now; at last, such as a patient taking their first breath, preceding their arrival out of a coma, we are finally able to see the first genuine signs of a deceleration of love. As one could imagine, in the Proustian world, love dies hard. But bit by bit we see the narrator being restored to emotional stability; or as he would say “returning to the state of indifference” (754).

At the beginning of The Fugitive, I was most compelled by the way Proust explains the act of forgetting, healing, and letting-go through objectivity, imagery, and most prominently through a system of moving entities. There seems to be no limit to the different forms that Proust uses to portray these concepts.

On page 754, the narrator explains that moving on is not always an act of moving forward. “And if returning to the state of indifference from which one started, one cannot avoid covering in the reverse direction the distances one had traversed in order to arrive at love” (754). He is sure to point out that, the big difference is that “they do not necessarily take the same routes” (754).

On the bottom of page 755, the narrator compares his love to the arrangement of music notes as he quotes, “And now, aware that, day by day, one element after another of my love was vanishing, the jealous side of it, then some other, drifting gradually back in a vague remembrance to the first tentative beginnings, it was my love that, in the scattered notes of the little phrase, I seemed to see disintegrating before my eyes” (756). This takes us back to Swann in love when the “little phrase” was resembled or reminded Swann of falling in love with Odette.

In the middle of page 757, we see a beautiful picture of a spirit. “Once again, as when I had ceased to see Gilberte, the love of women arose in me, relieved of any exclusive associations with a particular woman already loved, and floated like those essences that have been liberated by previous destructions and stray suspended in the springtime air, asking only to be reunited with a new creature” (757).

At the top of page 758, Proust describes the movement in and the movement out to which, “all of them seemed to me Albertines” (758).  At the bottom of page 758, Proust explains this added weight to his heart.

I think this idea of movement is really important but I am finding it complex to comprehend how exactly it relates to memory. I’ve considered that I am potentially missing the entire point that Proust is trying to make, or I just won’t understand until the end. Movement is clearly important. The biggest correlation I am currently seeing is that time is a continuously flowing duration. What is Proust trying to say through all of this? Habit and time seem to pain the narrator and strip him of life’s joy and beauty when he is falling in love… do they now aid him as he tries to get over Albertine? Is Proust seeing goodness in his greatest enemies? Is he appreciating the comfort of moving not up with pleasure or down with pain but straight with indifference?

[1] “OoCities – Geocities Archive / Geocities Mirror.” OoCities – Geocities Archive / Geocities Mirror. Oocities, Oct. 2009. Web. 14 May 2015.

Stephanie Zavas

In Search of Lost Time

13 May 2015

Proust on Music (pages 334-37; 339-340)

Throughout this part of the book the narrator focuses immensely on Art– it’s form, function, and the skilled people who create it. In these passages Marcel is at the Verdurins’, having lied to Albertine so he could go alone. He discusses love and explains his theory on how jealousy begets lying to a lover, and how subsequently that wounds the strength of union between two hearts because the notion of consenting to lie or mislead one’s partner tarnishes the purity of the relationship (295). The primary instigator of these thoughts of mistrust and these desires to be untruthful are feelings of jealousy. Jealousy, however, merely sets the stage for the actual catalyst of division; it’s the lying afterward that ruins the bond between two hearts.

While the narrator is listening to the deceased composer Vinteuil’s music being played, he is finding out that art can be more than something beautiful; it can be transcendental (340). This quality, which he is experiences through Vinteuil’s compositions, can allow people to experience hundreds of lifetimes, of feelings, across the stars (343). He finds in the music his phrase for his feelings about Albertine, the love, the pain, the contradiction of his feelings is expressed in the variations of rhythm and tone in a song, an expression of emotion that doesn’t use words or colours but can convey them through an entirely different form—sound (336-7).

This made me think back on the importance of Swann and Odette’s phrase, and how art in general is portrayed as influencing so many aspects of life; social standing, emotions, physical and mental well-being (Mme. Verdurin is a good example I think of a person who is affected physically by music), and can serve as a way to immortalize one’s individuality, like Proust said about Vinteuil and Elstir’s work on page 339. He expounds on the idea of art being a means to prevent oneself from vanishing into the past, and he says that because life encompasses experiences artists are only able to keep fragments alive, intimations of their individuality because experiences are separated by their own starts and stops, we can’t remember the entire summation of our experiences in a fluid way because memories are something like immersed in an ocean of existence, of time, so when we hear or see some masterpiece, we can get carried on a wave of what the artist is in that sand-dollar memory we find in opening up to experience great art (339-40). The, “…proof of the irreducibly individual existence of the soul.“ (341) lay in the artist’s “habitual speculation” and their own ability to express with an exactitude that is similar to a totally individual accent, the voice of their soul and existence through creating a piece of art which moves people into feeling who they were at the moment of composition.

Linking this notion of preserving oneself in fragments, as memories which other people can maybe access on their own person level to the theme of time and it’s anachronistic, choppy, nature is interesting to me. Proust compares sounds to colours, images to songs and this aids in effectively translating an observation on why creating is important, how it takes us back and into another time, place, world, and can influence future perceptions of experiences by the memory of what that art imparted—they are memories which aren’t our own but which we internalize and interpret within ourselves, which makes it ours. We are not lost at sea, we are droplets of the same ocean, no matter which wave we comprise.

BRANDON FORTNER

IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME

5/13/2015

CLOSE READING

Romantic relationships are essentially about possession and distance as Proust would have us believe.  Becoming closer to your romantic partner creates boredom as the novelty of the unknown edges away.  Proust is creating within his novel the idea of a controlling relationship that centers on the absence of love and focuses on possession as the main theme.  This absence of real creation, an absence of actual enjoyment of a romantic relationship creates a disgusting, focused and honest opinion of how powerless women should be and interact with the men they claim to love.  Pages 252 through 255 are going to be analyzed in relation to the statements mentioned above

“I regretted only that the style in which I had asked her to do her hair should appear to Albertine an additional bolt on the door of her prison.  And it was again this new domestic feeling that never ceased, even when I was far away from Albertine, to bind me to her.”  Once the narrator has control over Albertine their relationship changes and instead of creating a space for a healthy relationship to bloom.  The relationship between the reader and the narrator becomes foggy; Albertine appears statuesque in most scenes that she’s mentioned a character that comes across as fluid between past and present.  The narrator focuses on creating her as a totem of Balbec, an object to be possessed by him and him alone, even if he doesn’t love her.  In this passage there is reference to the Albertine the narrator knew in Balbec, “This Forgotten gesture transformed the body which it animated into that of the Albertine who as yet scarcely knew me.  It restored to Albertine, ceremonious beneath an air of brusqueness, her initial novelty, her mystery even her setting. I saw the sea behind this girl whom I had never seen shake hands with me in this way since I was at the seaside,” maybe it is moments like these that keep the narrator wanting Albertine to himself, he divulges in memory and revels in the possibility of what their relationship could have been, but is too afraid to let her go and experience what it isn’t.

In comparison to the movie, I have little sympathy for Albertine or the narrator.  The film portrayed Albertine in a much more relatable fashion; she became a person with emotions.  Her body language conveyed words that she didn’t have to say, and in the novel we’re left to wonder, even more, what her thoughts on the relationship are.  This possession comes across as way to stifle Albertine’s independence, in both the film and the novel.  Albertine was introduced to us in Balbec as this unattainable woman that the narrator was immensely focused on.  The narrator has always been interested in distance, romanticizing something and focusing more on the fantasy rather the reality of situations.  The series of events are often blurry, not disjointed, but hard to grasp completely at some times.  I’ve often thought that Proust was so dissatisfied with his own life that he had to impose his own insecurities on the characters he creates.

After the brief farewell between the narrator and Albertine, he leaves and is about to hail a cab when he runs into Morel.  Morel is sobbing over having left his wife or something, either way it is mentioned later that he had asked his betrothed to procure women for him, “But as soon as he had gone a little too far in his attempts at rape, and especially when he suggested to his betrothed that she might make friends with other girls whom she would then procure for him, he had met with a resistance that had enraged him.”  Morel’s relationship is quite different than the relationship portrayed between Albertine and the narrator.  Morel is facing hardships in his relationship because of overt sexuality, where as the narrator is in a relationship that involves very little to no sexual contact at all.  This might have been used as a framing mechanism for Morel or simply to introduce him and his relation to Jupien and Charlus.  Morel’s relationship is portrayed in an opposite fashion than the narrators, yet the narrator can be there to comfort him and also judge him.

What was a woman’s social and political role in twentieth century France?  Is this novel supposed to portray the relationship between women and men, how stifled women were at the time?  There is a constant general fear that the male characters have, and that is that the women they love are sleeping with other women.  It seems that all of Proust’s male characters have a fear that their partners are having sexual relations with other women.  Maybe in twentieth century France this was seen as the ultimate form of independence and Proust is trying to convey the relationship and fear of women becoming independent.

The Captive

pg. 396-400

About halfway through The Captive our narrator, leaving Albertine at home where he is secure she will stay for the evening, sneaks off to attend the Salon of Mme Verdurin. Here he runs into a regular in the little clan, Brichot, and many other familiar faces. Upon arriving at the salon we find that M. de Charlus has essentially hijacked the evening by inviting a number of his friends who treat Mme Verdurin with great disrespect, and attempting to make Morel (his current obsession) the center of attention. This leads to what will eventually be Charlus downfall in the little clan.

As the evening is drawing to a close Mme Verdurin schemes to drive a wedge between Charlus and Morel, and in order to do so sends Brichot off with Charlus. This sets the scene for an interesting discussion of homsexuality between the two men, to which our narrator disgruntledly bears witness (his thoughts by this point in the evening straying back home to the sleeping Albertine).

The conversation opens with the discussion of Mlle Vinteuil and her friend, whom Charlus describes as “terribly disreputable persons” and “quite notorious”, which is interesting as he about to launch into a great defense of the normalcy of homosexuality (394). This is the first strong example in this section of Charlus habit of switching between his social mask of the virile man and his true identity of the homosexual, or ‘invert’. Brichot jumps in quickly with a defense of the women, declaring that “There is one thing which the Baron seems to me not to have taken into account when he speaks of the reputation of these two ladies, namely that a person’s reputation may be at the same time appalling and undeserved.”(395) This provokes an immediate reaction from Charlus, which serves also as a revelation of his true form:

From the moment that Brichot had begun to speak of masculine reputations, M. de Charlus had betrayed all over his features that special sort of impatience which one sees on the face of a medical or military expert when society people who know nothing about the subject begin to talk nonsense about points of therapeutics or strategy. (395)

He then responds to Brichot opening with “you don’t know the first thing about these matters”, launching us into this conversation and establishing himself as expert on the subject, a position which he maintains for the remainder of the interaction (395).

Charlus goes on to refute Brichots claims regarding the prevalence of false reputation, claiming instead that men are prone to deny later in life their actions, stating they cannot see the beauty in men when in fact they once were actively homosexual, and declares that he (the expert) has only ever heard of two verified unjust reputations. This explanation is slightly revealing of his own habits, those of denying his attractions to men when it is convenient for him to appear as a high class member of society and hiding his mannerisms in order to maintain his own reputation.

Much of this section is concerned with Charlus trying to convince Brichot of the extreme prevalence of homosexuality, in part by exposing men whom Brichot had not previously suspected. The first of these disclosures is Charlus declaring that Saint-Loup is an ‘invert’. He explains this by saying that Saint-Loups friend the actress, Rachel, serves only as a cover and is herself part of a group of lesbians. I think he does this in part to draw the attention of the narrator, whom having had a close friendship with Saint-Loup and having shown a strong dislike if not a disgust for homosexual relations (both in his speech and in his avoidance of Charlus’ advances) is surely quite disturbed by the news. Charlus then builds to his big reveal, that “the average rate of sanctity, if you see any sanctity in that sort of thing, is somewhere between three and four out of ten.” (397) Sanctity in this context of course refers to hetersexuality, so in this statement Charlus achieves two things: first, to astonish the men with the idea that only three of ten men have refrained from homosexual activity, and two to question if hetersexuality is the more pure type of sexuality.

The narrator is “appalled at [Charlus’] statistic” when he considers the implications for the rates of lesbianism, and although he attempts to write it off as wishful thinking on the part of Charlus, it leads him back to worried thoughts about Albertine (397). Brichot on the other hand is shocked, declaring that if Charlus is right he must be “one of those rare visionaries who discern a truth which nobody round them has ever suspected”(398) and argues essentially that even if he is right, it can never be proven so he is making a fool of himself by proclaiming it to be true:

Posterity judges only on documentary evidence, and will insist on being shown your files. But as no document would be forthcoming to authenticate this sort of collective phenomenon which the initiated are only too concerned to leave in obscurity… you would be regarded as nothing more than a slanderer or a lunatic. (399)

To the reader this number may seem unrealistically high, at least as it’s reflected in general society, but upon further consideration it is quite possible that this ratio exists in the society created by Proust within In Search of Lost Time. A very large percentage of the characters to whom we are exposed possess some connection to, if not an outright participation in, homosexual activity, and Charlus will continue to expose more throughout this scene.

In the next moment Charlus mentions Swann, which gets the attention of Brichot and we can assume also our narrator, although he has not spoken, as he has a long standing obsession with both Swann and Odette (Mme. Swann). Brichot inquires as to how Charlus knows Swann, and whether Swann was “that way inclined”(399). To this Charlus takes (faux?) offense, accusing Brichot of thinking he only knows homosexuals. We are then privy to Charlus’ thought process as he decides whether to expose Swann. As he has already essentially lowered his mask in his outright declaration of the prevailing commonality of homosexuality, he decides that to reveal a small bit of the truth would be “harmless to him who was its object and flattering to him who let it out in an insinuation.” (399) He then launches into the half answer to Brichots question:

“I don’t deny that long ago in our school days, once in a while,” said the Baron, as though in spite of himself and thinking aloud; then pulling himself up: “But that was centuries ago. How do you expect me to remember? You’re embarrassing me,” he concluded with a laugh… “In those days he had a peaches and cream complexion, and… he was as pretty as a cherub.” (399-400)

In this passage Charlus has clearly outed both himself and Swann as having participated in homosexuality (although he had already made his “inversion’ pretty clear throughout the scene). The description of Charlus is interesting, especially considering that he is referring to a younger self, since he seems to be adopting the mannerisms of a school boy upon his reminiscing by the way he laughs and claims to be embarrassed by the discussion.

This leads to what I see as the conclusion of this particular section, though their conversation continues, as the subject of reputation comes full circle on the bottom of page 400. Charlus goes on to tell Brichot that he was in fact the one that introduced Swann to Odette, and to claim that it was only due to the merit of his good reputation that he was able to assist her:

That, my boy, is what comes of a good reputation, you see. Though I only half deserved it. [Odette] used to force me to get up the most dreadful of orgies for her, with five or six men. (400)

In this way Charlus displays to Brichot the usefulness of his mask, and the reason that in his mind the high statistic could be entirely plausible. By maintaining the illusion of heteronormativity, of virility, he and others like him are allowed the mobility, power, and social class that they require.

Michael Chapman

In Search of Lost Time

5/10/15

Close Reading Essay

The passage that i picked details the relationship between the narrator and Albertine. It focuses on the neurotic and irrational tendencies that plague the protagonist. After vacationing to Balbec, the narrator returns to Paris with his new mistress Albertine, who is now living with the narrator and his family. The narrator has successfully separated Albertine from the band of girls in Balbec but he finds that new problems arise after they settle into life together in Paris. This passage directly relates to the Combray portion of Swann In Love. In Combray, the narrator as a young boy is obsessed with possessing his mother’s love. He is a sickly child and he relies on a kiss from his mother every night so that he can fall asleep. When his mother is too busy to kiss him goodnight he lays in anguish and he becomes obsessed with getting the comfort that she provides him. This is very similar in a lot of ways to the neurotic tendencies that the narrator displays in his relationship with Albertine.

My passage begins on page 18 with the narrator stating his complex feelings for Albertine,  “Without feeling to the slightest degree in love with Albertine… I had nevertheless remained preoccupied with the way in which she disposed of her time”. I believe that is a gross understatement of what is really happening. The narrator feels bored with Albertine and says he is falling out of love with her but he cannot help but feel that he must control and monitor all of her actions and movements, even the most trivial. The narrator even goes as far to enlist a female friend named Andree to be Albertine’s consistent companion so that he can know what she is doing even when she is out of his sight.  Albertine is remarkably passive to this intrusion from her new lover and she indulges the narrator. Albertine’s nature calms the narrative and he briefly believes that by having taken Albertine away from the bad influences in Balbec that he has cured himself of his neurosis. But living in Paris provides all kinds of new dangers for the narrator.  He believes that there is a part of Albertine that is inherently lustful and uncontrollable. He imagines her walking down the street and catching the eye of another lustful soul. On page 19 this scene is described by the narrator, “ In any town whatsoever, she had no need to seek, for the evil existed not in Albertine alone, but in others to whom any opportunity for pleasure is good. A glance from one, understood at once by the other, brings the two famished souls in contact”. He imagines causing pain to these unknown and maybe even non- existent perpetrators. The narrator sees Albertine as a sensual creature that is uncontrollable. These mental images which differ from the ones from Balbec are enough to send our narrator into a panic by which he states that  his phobia has returned revived. He vows to “ set to work, as with their predecessors, to destroy, as though the destruction of an ephemeral cause could put an end to a congenital disease”. Because of his renewed anxiety he decides to take Albertine for a trip to the countryside thinking that a change of scenery my help his nerves. He thinks that a change of scenery may help him because his negative emotions could be connected to a particular place, but just like he left Balbec for Paris he learns that his feelings are not tied to just one specific place. On page 21 the narrator says, “ In leaving Balbec, I had imagined that I was leaving Gomorrah, plucking Albertine from it; in reality, alas, Gomorrah was disseminated all over the world.” Initially I think the narrator believed that he could sequester off Albertine and have her in his own world where he could control every aspect, but he is learning that this is not a possibility.

The Captive provides the reader with an insight into the mind of the narrator that is not found, in as much detail at least, in the other volumes. It shows the desperate lengths that the protagonist will go to in order to keep control over Albertine. This is even though he does not truly love her. In this section, he is reduced to having others spy on Albertine for him and he is not even ashamed of this. Although he knows something is wrong with him, he stills blames Albertine and her perceived flaws for his almost crippling phobia that she will leave him for another lover, possibly a woman.  Because of the previous reading and also from watching the film adaption of The Captive, I know that the narrator believes that Albertine is a lesbian and is actively involved in affairs with other women. I thought that it was interesting that he is so frightened by the fact that she might leave him for a woman, and this reminded me of the lecture on the origins of feminism in France. What I learned from that lecture was that many people were frightened by the rise of feminism and how that related to a change in gender roles. The idea of female homosexuality was a  frightening idea during this time period, because a lesbian was a woman who had no use for a male partner. This was very controversial at the time, because women were thought to need men to survive and also because the biological duty of a woman was to reproduce. I thought it was interesting that Proust tapped into this fear of the unknown that was felt by many men around the time that this book was written.

Throughout In Search of Lost Time the narrator spends most of his time in the company of upper-middle class and high class people, people who would have been aristocrats if the aristocracy was still intact, and often times discusses the importance that French Society, an Western Society in general, puts onto people of “good” standing, or people who are incredibly successful and wealthy. In The Captive, the narrator again comes to this notion of popularity and social standing as being the most important thing in a persons life. The narrator talks about the death of Swann and reads a paragraph from his obituary in a newspaper:

” ‘We learn with deep regret that M. Charles Swann passed away yesterday at his residence in Paris after a long and painful illness. A Parisian whose wit was widely appreciated, a discrimination but steadfastly loyal friend, he will be universally mourned, not only in those literary and artistic circles where the rare discernment of his taste made him a willing and welcome guest, but also at the Jockey Club of which he was one of the oldest and most respectful members. He belonged also to the Union and the Agricole. He had recently resigned his membership of the Rue Royale. His witty and striking personality never failed to arouse the interest of the public at all the great events of the musical and artistic seasons, notably at private views, where he was a regular attendant until the last few years, when he rarely left his house. The funeral will take place, etc.’ ”

This passage does its best to talk about Swann as a person, noting that he was very loyal to his friends and that he was witty and had a striking personality but the bulk of the paragraph actually focuses not on things that Swann did in his life or who Swann was but of what social groups he was a part of or of how the public viewed Swann at parties and events that he attended. One could argue that this things are what Swann did and who he was but as we have read, Swann lead quite the mysterious life in his earlier years, and more importantly there is no mention of Swann’s wife, Odette, or child, Gilberte, which can almost be guaranteed to be because of Odette’s social standing. If Swann truly did nothing of note besides going to these parties and being a part of these clubs then why is he such an influential person? It seems to me that, like a celebrity in modern times that isn’t actually a part of any profession, Swann is well known for the novelty of the public having someone to be well known in there midst, for that drama and intrigue that a public figure can bring to a society in a post-aristocratic era.

Unfortunately, the less well kept one’s title is in Paris, the less fondly remembered they are:

“From this standpoint, if one is not ‘somebody’ the absence of a well-known title makes the process of decomposition even more rapid. No doubt it is more or loss anonymously, without any individual identity, that a dead man remains the Duc d’uzes. But the ducal coronet does for some time hold the elements of him together, as their moulds held together those artistically designed ices which Albertine admired, whereas the names of the ultra-fashionable commoners as soon as they are dead, melt and disintegrate, ‘turned out’ of their moulds.”

It is in this passage that the narrator seals in that even though the aristocracy is technically dismantled, a aristocratic mindset still plagues Parisian society. It is proven here that in the eyes of the public, people without titles and wealth do not remain in this world after their passing, regardless of who the were as people and that even those with higher positions in society are not really remembered for who they were or even what they did but of who they knew and how they were seen.

The narrator falls into this category as well, unable to escape viewing Swann after his death as the public does instead of as he knew him.

“I felt that everything that had been told to me about the Verdurins was far too crude; and indeed in the case of Swann, whom I had known, I reproached myself for not having paid sufficient attention to him in a sufficiently disinterested spirit, for not having listened to him properly when he used to entertain me while we waited for his wife to come home for lunch and he showed me his treasures, now that I knew that he was to be classed with the most brilliant talkers of the past.”

Throughout In Search of Lost Time the importance of the technically unimportant aristocratic class is a major point of interest for the narrator and is explored in The Captive in a way that makes French society seem rather similar to American society in how it treats deceased celebrity and public figures in a manner that, more often than not, does not focus on who the person was or what morals they held but of who they knew and how they were viewed by the public.

Chapter four of Sodom and Gomorrah begins with the narrator explaining to his mother that he would not marry Albertine. He didn’t even wish to see her anymore. Instead, he decided to love Andree. But on page 701, when the narrator talks to Albertine for what he intends to be the last time, he is given a shocking piece of information.

“You remember my telling you about a friend, older than me, who had been a mother, a sister to me, with whom I spent the happiest years of my life, at Trieste, and whom in fact I’m expecting to join in a few weeks at Cherbourg, where we shall set out on a cruise together? Well, this friend… is the best friend of your Vinteuil’s daughter. And I know Vinteuil’s daughter almost as well as I know her. I always call them my two big sisters.”

The narrator immediately goes into a panic because both Vinteuil’s daughter and her friend are, as he puts it, “practicing and professional Sapphists.” He begins to associate Albertine with lesbianism as well. From page 705,

“What I had long dreaded, had vaguely suspected of Albertine, what my instinct deduced from her whole personality and my reason controlled by my desire had gradually made me repudiate, was true! Behind Albertine I no longer saw the blue mountains of the sea, but the room at Mountjouvain where she was falling into the arms of Mlle Vinteuil with that laugh in which she gave utterance as it were to the strange sound of her pleasure.”

The narrator, at this point, has been given no concrete evidence of Albertine’s sexuality. All he knows for certain is that she has friends who are lesbians. In contrast to Swann, who, when in the same situation, directly asked Odette about her history with women, the narrator does something he often does. He reanalyzes and interprets his memories through the lens of his newly accepted reality.

“With a girl as pretty as Albertine, was it possible that Mlle Vinteuil, having the desires she had, had not asked her to gratify them? And the proof that Albertine had not been shocked by the request, but had consented, was that they had not quarreled, that indeed their intimacy had steadily increased. And that graceful movement with which Albertine laid her chin upon Rosemonde’s shoulder, gazed at her smilingly, and deposited a kiss upon her neck…”

After contemplating Albertine’s sexuality, the narrator decides that he cannot let Albertine be alone with a girl, that she must always stay with him instead, despite the fact that just a few pages ago he was essentially disgusted with her. He is so desperate to keep her away from her homosexual tendencies, that on page 706 he makes up a story about a broken engagement.

“When I came here, I left a woman whom I was to have married, who was ready to sacrifice everything for me. She was to start on a journey this morning, and every day for the last week I have been wondering whether I should have the courage not to telegraph to her that I was coming back. I did have the courage, but it made me so wretched that I thought I would kill myself. That is why I asked you last night if you would come and sleep at Balbec. If I had to die, I should have liked to bid you farewell.”

The narrator seems to be driven more by a fear of Albertine in a lesbian relationship, rather than a desire to actually win her love. On page 714, he says, “I was too inclined to believe that, once I was in love, I could not be loved in return, and that pecuniary interest alone could attach a woman to me.” So through pity and money, the narrator convinces Albertine to stay with him, and on page 715, he kisses her neck, a parallel to his memory of Albertine kissing Rosemonde’s neck.