Tara laChance
Close reading
April 18, 2015
After all of the games and assumptions that whirled around Odette and Swann’s relationship in Swann’s Way, I was pleasantly surprised to read the more straight-forward and blatant text on pages 49-58 in the next book, Within a Budding Grove. Swann seems to remain quite delusional about his relationship with Odette, not believing things that are laid out right before his eyes. He succumbs to Odette’s manipulations and finally marries her, against the opinions of what everyone else seems to think about their union.
For my close reading, I am going to focus on the pages 51 and 52 of the Within a Budding Grove book. On page 51, the sentence begins with “The marriage”. In this section, it is stated very clearly the “truth” of the relationship between Swann and Odette. In the very first sentence it states that the marriage, “was not well received” by Swann’s rich aunt and society in general. This fact that this would be the response to their marriage could be safely assumed due to the many love games they played with each other, one of which was Odette not allowing Swann to speak of her to any of his friends when they were “dating”. Also, the constant judgements by pretty much everyone in his circle were a constant topic of conversation at parties and in the community at large. Swann’s very rich and powerful aunt goes as far as refusing to meet Odette but also makes a “campaign” for everyone she knows to follow suit.
The second sentence says, “There has been some talk of his wife’s having money, but that’s the grossest fallacy.”[1] The part that struck me about this sentence were the words ‘grossest fallacy’. This says to me that there were many fallacies, or lies, woven in to their relationship. Not only about Odette, but within the relationship as a whole. It goes on to say that, “the whole affair has been looked upon with disfavor.” No one was happy about the two of them together. The relationship has been the poster child for dysfunction from the start.
Further down page 51, the sentence begins with, “I, myself, who knew him in the old days,” the narrator is “astonished” by the person Swann has become. How he has lowered himself to being with a woman like Odette and going as far as to marry her as well? Swann even goes as far as to ask his politically powerful friends if his wife could “take the liberty” to call upon their wives. This shows me that he is at least aware of this fact about Odette, that she is simply not in the same class and it would be a privilege for her to be able to be a part of the group.
Then they begin to talk about how Odette had blackmailed Swann for years by taking his daughter away any time Odette didn’t get what she wanted from him. Still Swann proceeds to marry her and yet again, give her what she wants, much like giving a child the very object they have just thrown a temper tantrum about not getting. On top of that, he is blind to what Odette is really doing by using their daughter as a pawn in their game. If not blind to it, he is choosing, yet again to simple turn a blind eye to it because in some way the relationship is still serving a purpose for him.
On page 52 the narrator talks about how everyone thought that Odette would become horrible once Swann finally married her. But, to everyone’s surprise, “her temper has actually become angelic”. The use of the word angelic makes me think that they first viewed her as devilish. Also the fact that people find it funny, and are all talking about the way that Swann talks about Odette. Also, that they did not expect that he would be out proclaiming his love urbi et orbi, which means “To the city and to the world”[2] for her because of the fear of being a (Moliere’s word)[3] which means Turtuffe or hypocrite and they go as far as to say that, “people find it a little excessive the way that he talks about his wife.” Excessive? That is an interesting term to use when talking about a husbands vocal affection for his wife. This just gives more credence to the fact that no one is buying that this is a happy marriage or even that it is a valid one.
I have experienced both sides of this coin: being blinded by emotion to the truth of someone’s character and therefore ignoring all of the red flags and warnings by friends and family and I have also been the friend and family member trying to get someone to open their eyes to the truth of their partner’s intentions or character. Either way, as these two pages I’ve been talking about have shown, there is a very valid reason for the phrase love is blind.
[1] Within a Budding Grove, page 51
[2] Wikipedia
[3] Google.com