Tara laChance<\/p>\n
Close reading<\/p>\n
April 18, 2015<\/p>\n
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After all of the games and assumptions that whirled around Odette and Swann\u2019s relationship in Swann\u2019s Way\u00ad, 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. \u00a0Swann seems to remain quite delusional about his relationship with Odette, not believing things that are laid out right before his eyes.\u00a0 He succumbs to Odette\u2019s manipulations and finally marries her, against the opinions of what everyone else seems to think about their union.<\/p>\n
For my close reading, I am going to focus on the pages 51 and 52 of the Within a Budding Grove book.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0On page 51, the sentence begins with \u201cThe marriage\u201d.\u00a0 In this section, it is stated very clearly the \u201ctruth\u201d of the relationship between Swann and Odette.\u00a0 In the very first sentence it states that the marriage, \u201cwas not well received\u201d by Swann\u2019s rich aunt and society in general.\u00a0 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 \u201cdating\u201d.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Swann\u2019s very rich and powerful aunt goes as far as refusing to meet Odette but also makes a \u201ccampaign\u201d for everyone she knows to follow suit.<\/p>\n
The second sentence says, \u201cThere has been some talk of his wife\u2019s having money, but that\u2019s the grossest fallacy.\u201d[1]\u00a0 The part that struck me about this sentence were the words \u2018grossest fallacy\u2019.\u00a0 This says to me that there were many fallacies, or lies, woven in to their relationship.\u00a0 Not only about Odette, but within the relationship as a whole.\u00a0 It goes on to say that, \u201cthe whole affair has been looked upon with disfavor.\u201d\u00a0 No one was happy about the two of them together.\u00a0 The relationship has been the poster child for dysfunction from the start.<\/p>\n
Further down page 51, the sentence begins with, \u201cI, myself, who knew him in the old days,\u201d the narrator is \u201castonished\u201d by the person Swann has become.\u00a0 How he has lowered himself to being with a woman like Odette and going as far as to marry her as well?\u00a0 Swann even goes as far as to ask his politically powerful friends if his wife could \u201ctake the liberty\u201d to call upon their wives.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
Then they begin to talk about how Odette had blackmailed Swann for years by taking his daughter away any time Odette didn\u2019t get what she wanted from him.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 On top of that, he is blind to what Odette is really doing by using their daughter as a pawn in their game.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
On page 52 the narrator talks about how everyone thought that Odette would become horrible once Swann finally married her.\u00a0 But, to everyone\u2019s surprise, \u201cher temper has actually become angelic\u201d.\u00a0 The use of the word angelic makes me think that they first viewed her as devilish.\u00a0 Also the fact that people find it funny, and are all talking about the way that Swann talks about Odette. \u00a0Also, that they did not expect that he would be out proclaiming his love urbi et orbi<\/em>, which means \u201cTo the city and to the world\u201d[2] for her because of the fear of being a (Moliere\u2019s word)[3] which means Turtuffe or hypocrite and they go as far as to say that, \u201cpeople find it a little excessive the way that he talks about his wife.\u201d\u00a0 Excessive?\u00a0 That is an interesting term to use when talking about a husbands vocal affection for his wife.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n I have experienced both sides of this coin:\u00a0 being blinded by emotion to the truth of someone\u2019s 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\u2019s intentions or character.\u00a0 Either way, as these two pages I\u2019ve been talking about have shown, there is a very valid reason for the phrase love is blind.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n [1] Within a Budding Grove, page 51<\/p>\n [2] Wikipedia<\/p>\n [3] Google.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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… Continue Reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1114,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577"}],"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\/1114"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=577"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}