Close Reading
April 19th 2015

As we begin volume two part two Places-Names, Within A Budding Grove, we notice young Marcel has matured significantly. He is emerging from childhood and expressing his world of sexuality. In the beginning of Places-Names, Marcel is on his way to Balbec along side of his Grandmother. He seems to be reminiscing over his old love for Gilberte, he then begins to describe how his love for her is no longer fully intact, however that feeling of love he had for Gilberte before is still with him but no longer just for her, he can bestow that love on another girl (299).

Marcel goes on with how he is almost completely over Gilberte then he suddenly hears someone refer to “the head of the Ministry of Posts and his family (300),” which makes him remember a conversation Gilberte had with her father Swann. That memory reminded him of Gilberte which brought back the memory of his feelings for her. He mentions the laws of habit and how habit weakens everything because it can remind us of a person we had forgotten, (a habit of remembering Gilberte when he heard similar words from a conversation she had which stimulates his feelings) (300).

I would also like to focus on a similar passage when Marcel begins to understand the power of his sexuality on pages 317-320. Although he had loved Gilberte at one point he is now realizing his feelings for other girls. While he is on this train he spots a girl who is giving coffee and milk. He realizes he is attracted to this girl and begins to pay attention to every detail of her, like most people do when they become attracted to someone. He describes her face as being rosier than the sky (318), which in habit reminds him of the beautiful sunrise he had witnessed earlier through the window during his train ride. He begins to imagine being with her and all these emotions he had experienced before is all coming back for this different girl.

“When we feel the desire to live which is reborn in us whenever we discover a new beauty and happiness” (318). From my understandings he begins to use a metaphor explaining the qualities of beauty and happiness because we often forget that these are individual qualities (318). “A well-read man will begin to yawn with boredom when one speaks to him of a new “good book,” because the man will image all sorts of books that he has read, where a good book is something special, and not made up of all the previous books but is its own book” (318). This all meaning that Marcel should not think that this girl is going to be like his last love Gilberte but she will be different because she is not Gilberte. It is again habit that gives us this need of comparing one thing we have experienced to another which does conflict with decisions we make and sometimes the people around us. Like Marcels grandmother and her habit of carrying a volume of Mme De Sevigne and Memories De Madame De Beausergent because she then gave Marcel Sevigne to read and he began to admire the author (314).

Marcel seems to be obsessed with this amazing feeling he receives when he is in the presences of a beautiful women. He is in love with being in love. He does not know the girls name, or her life story, he just wants to dig deeper into these feelings. Marcel does miss his chance of meeting this girl but keeps this idea in the back of his head that one day he could possibly see her again until then she is just in his memories.