{"id":1043,"date":"2015-05-14T15:28:38","date_gmt":"2015-05-14T22:28:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.evergreen.edu\/losttimejared\/?p=107"},"modified":"2015-05-14T15:28:38","modified_gmt":"2015-05-14T22:28:38","slug":"the-captive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/the-captive\/","title":{"rendered":"The Captive"},"content":{"rendered":"

Of all the readings we have done so far this quarter my favorite is pages 253-440 of The Captive<\/em>. In this section of the book, our narrator, attends the Verdurin party. A party, as it turns out, that is hosted (or taken over) by M. de Charlus. Admittedly, the narrator\u2019s reasoning for attending the party is to find out about Albertine\u2019s whereabouts and whether she has been with other girls. His fears are never quelled, only excited, instead though, he spends a large portion of the party creating wonderful descriptions of the characters within.<\/p>\n

Things really get heated, though, when the guests begin to leave the party and our narrator ends up in a private conversation with M. de Charlus and Brichot. At this point, our narrator is prying for information about Albertine\u2019s whereabouts and learns much about homosexuals of his day in France. M. de Charlus is no fool and continues to humor our narrator even though he knows our narrator is obsessed with Albertine’s whereabouts. Still, it surprised him \u201cgreatly when he [Charlus] cited among the inverts the \u2018friend of the actress\u2019 who was the leader of the little society of four friends\u201d (396). Oh no! The four at Balbec, all of which our narrator would love… if he could have them individually. <\/p>\n

As Charlus relates \u201cTwo are entirely for women. One of them is, but isn\u2019t sure about his friend, and in any case they hide their doings from each other\u201d (397). I can\u2019t imagine this made our narrator feel any better. Now, if he continues on with his obsessive tendencies, he has to \u2018protect\u2019 Albertine from carrying on in the \u2018Fab Four\u2019 at Balbec, as it\u2019s quite possible she could have lesbian relations with them. <\/p>\n

Charlus, as usual, likes to flaunt his knowledge and relates to our narrator and Brichot, just how many homosexuals there are in their midst: \u201cYou yourself, Brichot, who would stake your life on the virtue of some man or other who comes to this house and whom the initiated [\u2018the initiated\u2019 being one of a multitude of terms used to describe those who partake in homosexual sex] would recognise a mile away, you feel obliged to believe like everyone else what is said about someone in the public\u201d, he goes on \u201cAs things are, the average rate of sanctity [those partaking in homosexual sex], if you see any sanctity in that sort of thing, is somewhere between three and four out of ten\u201d (397). <\/p>\n

This information shocks both Brichot and our narrator, though they believe him and as the narrator thinks to himself \u201cIf Brichot had transferred to the male sex the question of bad reputations, in my case, conversely, it was to the female sex that, thinking of Albertine, I applied the Baron\u2019s words\u201d (397). The real reason our narrator is here, is to find out the truth of what Albertine is doing. The results will, naturally, only make him more obsessive. The fact that he doesn\u2019t come to the conclusion that it\u2019s not within his rights nor abilities to control what another human being does, or that he should find someone who would be solely faithful to him, is beyond our narrator.<\/p>\n

This conversation, quite smoothly leads into the revelations about Swann. As Austin explained in his close reading, the narrator wants to know all about Swann, since after Swann\u2019s death, he was recognized as one of the great people of the narrator\u2019s time. Unfortunately, the results are not good for our narrator or Swann. Charlus declares that he was Odette\u2019s lover and that Odette slept with all sorts of men and \u2018urged\u2019 Charlus to put together orgies for her. The validity of Charlus\u2019s words are apparently taken for granted by the narrator and conclude the story of Swann\u2019s love in an sad way for Swann and in a quite different way for Odette. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Of all the readings we have done so far this quarter my favorite is pages 253-440 of The Captive. In this section of the book, our narrator, attends the Verdurin party. A party, as it turns out, that is hosted… Continue Reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1181,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1043"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1181"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1043\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}