Swann’s Way: Part 2 (up to p170)

Wow, I see it’s some time since I updated and I do feel it. I hope I can remember this far back, but I was concentrating on the reading and haven’t really had a chance to write about it. It seems quite a long time since the narrator left Combrey (I’m on page 270 in the Wordsworth edition at the moment).

When I left off the narrator was describing the snobbery of M. Legrandin. As the novel carries on Legradin is still behaving suspiciously. The narrator describes the two walks from the house, ‘Swann’s way’ (the Meseglise way) and the ‘Guermantes way’. Both represent different aspects. Guermantes are a family of aristocrats in the area, to the narrator ‘Guermantes...meant no more than the ultimate goal, ideal rather than real,’ (p142). ‘Marcel’ does not aspire to be like Legradin, associating with aristocrats and snubbing acquaintances; rather he associates himself with Swann, particularly when he encounters Gilberte, Swann’s daughter at Swann’s estate. 

In a continuous theme throughout the novel, sense is associated with memory and emotion, in this case the scent and sight of flowers, particularly pink hawthorn blossom is associated with the obsessional love he feels for her. In particular, the pink colour of the flowers which is in turn associated in his mind with expensive pink sugared biscuits, cream cheese with strawberries and other delicious edible things.  Gilberte is fair with pink freckles and black eyes.  He is so struck with her beauty that his instinct is to try to insult her in the hope that she will remember him.  Although the narrator feels that he loves her, both he and the reader are only given a brief glimpse of her, we don’t know how old she is or anything much about her apart from the narrator’s feelings and her appearance. 

Along the Meselglise way there is also the house of M. Vinteuil , whom was previously encountered behaving snobbishly towards Swann. His daughter has a friend with ‘an evil reputation’, who is evidently having a lesbian affair with Mademoiselle Vinteuil. M. Vinteuil is heart-broken and retires from society in shame, fearing judgement. However, Swann is perfectly friendly towards him despite his previous treatment and the way that M. Vinteuil talks hypocritically about Swann’s ‘unfortunate’ marriage. 

The narrator’s sexual awakening begun with Swann’s daughter continues with his longing for a peasant girl, mirrored in the projection of Swann’s desires in the succeeding chapter. It is significant that the narrator wishes for a peasant girl, it’s almost as if he is not really ready for a relationship with a woman of his own class.

The narrative moves on several years and the narrator introduces the topic of ‘sadism’, using it as a foreshadowing device. ‘Marcel’ voyeuristically observes Mlle Vinteuil and her girlfriend at the house where the recently deceased M. Vinteuil lived, apparently having died for her (according to ‘Marcel’s’ mother). Although Mlle Vinteuil is grieving, the ‘friend’ encourages her to desecrate the photograph of her father, much to the narrator’s shock. 

So far the narrator’s view of women has been rather narrow in that he seems to canonise them (in the case of his mother and Gilberte), see them as beneath him (in the case of Francoise), objectify them (longing for peasant women)  or demonise them. He takes a particularly dim view of homosexual women in the way that Mlle Vinteuil is described through the effect her behaviour has had on her father and the sacrilegious act of spitting on her father’s photograph. Yet ‘Marcel’ is a product of his family’s suspicion and judgmental attitude towards some of the people in the village such as Swann’s wife and Mlle Vinteuil. There is also his innate priggishness and snobbery, I don’t think that the reader is supposed to like or admire him and in this way he is an unreliable narrator, not that he is deliberately untrustworthy, just that he tends to ignore or misinterpret certain facts. This may be due to the sense that we get that this is ‘young Marcel’ narrating rather than the older version, and it is not clear how old he is in this part of the novel. 

Anyway, this seems a good time to stop, although I see that it would probably be a good idea to update more frequently as I have about a hundred pages or so to get through writing about!