Vairea Houston
\n4\/22\/15
\nPg. 357-361<\/p>\n
The narrator has arrived at the hotel in Balbec. He is depressed to be away from his mother, and nothing is how he imagined it to be. Here the hotel is filled with \u201ctemporary or local celebrities\u201d and he is constantly visualizing himself through their eyes as lower class (p.357). Although being insubstantial to all the guests upsets him, he is the most upset to have M. de Stermaria\u2019s contempt. He fancies M. de Stermaria\u2019s daughter. The way she walks, her pretty face, complexion, and her obvious aristocratic upbringing. \u201cIt made them more desirable also, advertising their inaccessibility as a high price enhances the value of a thing that has already taken our fancy\u201d(p.358). He was infatuated with her for her beauty, status, and her unattainability.
\n The manager of the hotel spots Mme de Villeparisis and whispers such to the narrator\u2019s grandmother. Here is his chance to become recognized and be able to speak to Mlle de Stermaria. Mme de Villeparisis has high status and is obviously recognized by people of the hotel. He then recounts the people he has seen at the hotel that remind him of people back home. He met Legrandin as a waiter and Mme Swann as a bathing superintendent. In Within a Budding Grove, Proust is constantly letting us know that what we imagine is entirely different than our reality. In this case, he has actually seen Mme de Villeparisis and she is not a \u201cvictim of a magic spell which had robbed her of her power\u201d (p. 359). Mme de Villeparisis is able to give the narrator power to pass this social gulf he finds himself drowning in.
\nUnfortunately his grandmother lived in her own little world and did not notice the desperateness in her grandsons face. She just doesn\u2019t understand that he attaches his feelings to how others perceive him. He should have told her to speak to Mme de Villeparisis if he was that emotional about it. He had heard Mme de Villeparisis\u2019 name before in his home when he was a child. Her title was interesting to him, like uncommon Christian names, or street signs. He goes on to name the street names, defining them as common, lower class, even dirty. Despite this, her name and her social status gave her title and in gaining her friendship he could have a chance with Mlle de Stermaria.
\nHis grandmother believed that when a person went on vacation, social interaction did not exist. There was all sorts of time for that in Paris, vacation was for interaction with nature. She feels that everyone has the same notion as she does when it comes to this. So both his grandmother and Mme de Villeparisis look away. With that quick exchange, the narrator has become heartbroken once again. He is a shipwrecked mariner, stuck at sea, depressed at having seen a glimmer of hope in the horizon. Mme de Stermaria was his horizon, which has now disappeared. The narrator is affected so much by the interactions he receives from others around him. He imagines the future while he\u2019s in the present, and is discouraged every time it is not what he expected. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Vairea Houston 4\/22\/15 Pg. 357-361 The narrator has arrived at the hotel in Balbec. He is depressed to be away from his mother, and nothing is how he imagined it to be. Here the hotel is filled with “temporary or… Continue Reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1174,"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\/657"}],"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\/1174"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=657"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}