47 pages • 1 hour read
Marcel ProustSwann's Way: In Search of Lost Time, Volume One
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1913A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 2, Pages 84-133Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2: “Combray”
Part 2, Pages 84-133 Summary
Another character from Combray is Legrandin. Like many of the people Marcel meets through his parents, Legrandin is a snob. One day, Marcel’s father gathers the family together to announce that Legrandin considers himself to be above Marcel’s family, so he refuses to introduce them to his sister. Marcel’s parents take great offense at this refusal. Around this time, Marcel remembers being horrified by the sight of Françoise killing a chicken. He struggled to reconcile the brutality of the act with the sweet flavor of the cooked chicken. Over the years, Marcel comes to realize that Françoise has worked hard to elevate herself above the other servants. When Marcel’s family spots Legrandin in town one day, he has, the narrator says, an expression of “extraordinary zeal and animation” (88) though he seems to ignore the family. Strangely, Legrandin invited the young Marcel to dine with him the day before. Marcel attends the dinner; when he asks about the aristocratic Guermantes family, Legrandin’s reply confuses Marcel. He comes to suspect that Legrandin is simply a snob. Despite numerous awkward meetings with Legrandin, Marcel and his father fail to resolve the apparent animosity between them.
Marcel describes the beauty of Combray. He observed much of this beauty while taking long walks, both alone and with his parents. Their routes include Swann’s Way, a footpath that passes Swann’s estate. Marcel appreciates the abundance of pink blossoms which fall during the summer from the hawthorn trees. To Marcel, the falling of the hawthorn blossoms has an almost religious quality. During one excursion down Swann’s Way, Marcel’s parents decide to take a shortcut across Swann’s property. They believe that Odette and Gilberte are not home, but they are mistaken. They meet Odette, Monsieur de Charlus, and Gilberte. During this brief, awkward meeting, Marcel is convinced that Gilberte looked at him with disgust in her eyes. Nevertheless, he immediately falls in love with her. To him, her eyes seem blue rather than their real dark black. Marcel always imagines Gilberte to have blue eyes. He is struck, the narrator says, by her “long and subtle and inexpressive stare” (101) though the accidental meeting ends quickly.
Though Marcel takes pleasure in any mention of Swann’s name, many people judge Swann for the state of his marriage. They believe that he married a person who is socially beneath him. Vinteuil criticizes Odette for her reputation. To the older Marcel, however, Vinteuil is nothing more than a hypocrite. He describes how a woman with a similarly scandalous reputation later moved into Vinteuil’s home as a music teacher, only to begin a sexual relationship with his daughter. Rumors of the illicit affair caused misery for Vinteuil. The affair shocked Vinteuil so much that he aged rapidly and, a few months later, died. Marcel believes that Vinteuil died of a broken heart.
Around this time, Aunt Léonie also dies. Françoise is struck by a “grief savage in its violence” (108), and she mourns her former employer intensely. The legal and bureaucratic necessities of the death mean that Marcel is permitted to go on walks alone. While walking, he thinks deeply about the women he might one day love. During one of these walks, he finds himself outside Vinteuil’s house and begins spying on Vinteuil’s daughter through a window. When her female lover enters, they kiss as Marcel watches. Then, they mock Vinteuil even though he is only recently dead. Just as they consider spitting on a photograph of the deceased man, the window is closed, and Marcel does not hear the rest of the conversation. He concludes that Mademoiselle Vinteuil is sadistic.
Marcel describes the natural beauty which surrounds Combray and the way he would lose himself in happiness. A large wedding is held in Combray, and one of the guests is the Duchess of Guermantes. The Duchess has a reputation as a beautiful woman, almost like the princesses of legends. He wants to see her for himself, but he is perturbed when she appears to be a normal woman. The more he stares at her, however, the more he falls in love. Marcel sees her like an actress in a play whose disguise has been removed and whose true self has been revealed. As with Gilberte, Marcel chooses to incorrectly believe that the Duchess has blue eyes. He hopes that this will make her more beautiful in his mind. The thought of beauty captivates Marcel, particularly when he remembers his long walks around Combray. He still takes many walks, but he is never able to recapture the sense of wonder he experienced in the past. The time Marcel spent reflecting on his youth in Combray makes him want to revisit the story of how Swann met Odette.
Part 2, Pages 84-133 Analysis
Marcel is an adult looking back at the formative events of his youth, so he naturally interrogates the role of the adults in his life rather than the seemingly inconsequential children. The adults provided him with access to other worlds, experiences, and insights, while his fellow children were only interested in playing. To the mature Marcel, these adults were rounded and more interesting characters, whose actions had consequences, so they are more suitable subjects for his narration. In this sense, the portrayal of Marcel’s life can never be complete. The audience is never given an objective insight into Marcel’s youth. Instead, the audience must rely on the subjective guidance of the older Marcel. He plays the narrator, curating the depiction of events. The mature Marcel believes that emotion and memory affect the experience of time, so the most emotional memories of his past are given disproportionate time in the narration of his life. Marcel provides an overview of those events and experiences that he feels were most consequential. The narration is inherently subjective, even if Marcel claims that he wishes to depict the totality of his existence.
Most characters are involved in romantic relationships, and most of these are heterosexual. The relationships which are not heterosexual are rarely depicted explicitly. Instead, homosexuality exists as the subject of rumor and gossip, something implied rather than directly addressed. When Marcel spies on Vinteuil’s orphaned daughter, the novel comes closest to directly depicting homosexuality. Mademoiselle Vinteuil and her young female lover are glimpsed through an open window during a moment of intimacy. Marcel is reduced to the role of the voyeur, glimpsing something forbidden. There is an illicit tone to his spying, as even the mature Marcel believes that he saw something that he was not meant to see. While heterosexual relationships are depicted directly, this relationship between two young women is depicted through interpretation and innuendo. The audience views the events through the memories of the mature Marcel, who recounts the experiences of the young Marcel, who must interpret actions and gestures glimpsed briefly through a window. This mere fraction of a homosexual relationship confirms the presence of homosexuality in the world of Swann’s Way, but is also a reminder that such relationships are conducted away from the public gaze.
Marcel’s brief experience as a voyeur foreshadows his sexual awakening. When looking through the window into the Vinteuil home, he lacked the understanding of love and sex to comprehend what he witnessed. His first meeting with Gilberte is a moment of maturation. The complicated nature of this awakening is depicted through sensory overload. The mature Marcel tries to remember every detail about the first time he felt a pang of love. He recalls the sights, the smells, the sounds, the tastes, and every tactile sensation. The meeting is one of the key illustrations of the theme of Sensation and Sentimentality. The sentiment of love is recalled through the sensory inputs; Marcel recreates the memory by filling in every sensory detail that he can remember. After recalling the world in which the meeting takes place, Marcel turns to the complicated nature of his first experience of love. The color of Gilberte’s eyes is an indication of Marcel’s subjectivity. He can recall every detail of the meeting but, for a long time, he convinced himself that Gilberte had blue rather than black eyes. He falls in love with an idea of Gilberte that exists almost entirely in his mind. Much like Swann will later fall in love with an idealized version of Odette, Marcel’s first experiences of love are overwhelming and confusing. He lacks the understanding needed to process his experiences and allows himself to fall in love with a fictionalized version of a woman he hardly knows. Romance, desire, delusion, and sensation come together in a pivotal moment in Marcel’s life.
