Stephanie Zavas
In Search of Lost Time
04 May 2015
On Madame de Villeparisis and Aristocratic Women (244-249)
Mme de Villeparisis in this selection serves as a stark comparison to Guermantes, who holds and maintains a higher position in the French aristocracy but lives in constant anxiety over the conducting herself properly within her position. Women it seems, if they address their individuality publicly, are much more likely to be caste-down (I’m imagining the scene earlier in the book where Mme Guermantes is acting like a silly servant girl inside her house, but wouldn’t deign to exhibit that character anywhere in the eyes of society, however, as the narrator exhibits, she is always under watch by someone else, like everyone, even if it’s a boy looking outside his window).
De Villeparisis is characterized by the narrator’s postulations on how she came to meet her defamation. What secret scandals, now hidden from the children of her once-peers (even the word peer would suggest observation and not so much camaraderie) was she involved in? What mal-temperament, misconduct, social no-no did she commit to lose her place in society? Marcel talks about her sharp-tongue, which, though her conduct now does not exemplify, may have been a cause. In writing her memoir she may have taken on those airs of kindness and charm which she was not bestowed with in her natural character, that women were more well-received by adhering to a strict form, something rather than someone, which lent itself to the foundation of those fancy people’s existence.
I found this passage to be, probably appropriately for its time, markedly sexist. Of de Villeparisis’ character the narrator writes:
Instead of the character which it possessed [referring to the character of de Villeparisis’ generation of aristocratic women], one finds a sensibility, an intelligence which are not conducive to action…(245) it was this intelligence, resembling rather that of a writer of the second rank than that of a woman of position…that was undoubtedly the cause of her social decline. (246)
This, among several other statements in the passage (there is one about her lacking the ability to comprehend the genius of certain artists, the discourse later when Marcel equates de Villeparisis’ memoir to work of frivolity because it is not academic; he calls her a bluestocking woman which implies this attempt at an equality with men’s conduct within her role as an aristocratic woman)serves to emphasize that a fancy lady’s role in that world is to do what is proper, with little merit for their actual personality if it shies away from what is typical or trivial too much.
Moreover, this passage is a depiction of the importance and delicacy of social functions in the aristocracy, as when the narrator hypothesizes that it may be (or in addition to her taunting less educated guests) that because she disregards the class distinction and favors individuality more (inviting the handsome man, or the funny guy, or the way too-cool one), eschewing the tenet of exclusivity as a measure of success, that is her downfall. This is critical because it makes me wonder more about Odette and Madame Verduran’s success at navigating this social construct. What fortitude and reservations did they develop and overcome to be the stock people they are? And Guermantes, she who’s secretly afraid of being this marvelous title, how does she compare? One thing I know I got out of reading this passage is that de Villeparisis, for all her individuality, was unsuccessful in society because she wanted to be a person and not a host (and I mean that in a parasitic weird sort of way).