On page 245, the narrator sees Mme de Guermantes for the first time, taking particular note of her red face and the pimple on the corner of her nose. At first, he is extremely disappointed in how ordinarily human she seems. Unable to cope with this reality, he makes the (perhaps unconscious) decision to re-imagine her to fit the idealized perception of her he had before. Swann has a similar experience in the next section of the book when he falls in love with Odette, though it seems more like obsession than genuine affection.

One of the major things Swann and the narrator have in common in their romances is their need to see these women as art. The narrator wishes for Mme de Guermantes to be “a tapestry or a stained-glass window, as living in another century, as being of another substance than the rest of the human race.” And Swann’s love for Odette doesn’t fully blossom until one day when she reminds him of a Sistine fresco. The more he is able to associate her with art, the more he is able to love her. From page 317, “The words ‘Florentine Painting’ were invaluable to Swann. They enabled him, like a title, to introduce the image of Odette into a world of dreams and fancies which, until then, she had been debarred from entering, and where she assumed a newer and nobler form.” Neither of them wanted a woman, they wanted a beautiful symbolic concept.

Swann and the narrator aren’t abnormal for doing this. When we imagine the kind of person we want in our lives, we never say to ourselves, “and here are the flaws, unflattering features, and annoying habits I would like this person to have.” We grow up wanting so badly to believe that perfect mythical heroes exist, that when we form new relationships (romantic or otherwise) with someone, we tend to put that person on a pedestal. While it is nice to think the best of someone, it’s unfair dehumanizing to think of them as more than they can be. I think, whether we’re conscious of it or not, we sometimes see people just in terms of what they can offer us- status, a sense of worth, power. For Swann and the narrator, they were allowed to feel like a part of some grand mythical world. I read these sections and was disturbed by these obsessions, but unfortunately it could be easy for anyone to distance themselves that much from the reality of a person.