About midway through Combray II, when visiting his uncle and his uncle’s lady companion our narrator becomes “disillusioned” and his world as it exists is slightly shattered. As he explains “I felt somewhat disillusioned, for this young lady was in no way different from other pretty women who I had seen from time to time at home… I could find no trace in her of the theatrical appearance which I admired in photographs of actresses, nothing of the diabolical expression which would have been in keeping with the life she must lead” (Proust 105).

This conviction comes from our child narrator, who is realizing for the second time that a persons occupation or beliefs will not necessarily be reflected in their attire. Previously, he assumed that if someone is going to be an actor or actress, they should look like this or that. For one, because he had seen them in photos as such and also because his parents and society at large had dictated that this type of clothing or interest equals this class of person.

Later his disillusionment apparently turns to respect for the lady: “it has since struck me as one of the most touching aspects of the part played in life by these idle, painstaking women that they devote their generosity, their talent, a disposable dream of sentimental beauty… and a wealth that counts for little, to the fashioning of a fine and precious setting for the rough, ill-polished lives of men” (Proust 106-107).

Both of these realizations that appeared in the narrator’s childhood reflect on women and their positions in society. First he realizes that maybe even ‘common’ looking women could be actresses too and secondly how the women around him devote their lives to men who he sees as “ill-polished”.