"All the same, it was a matter of so little importance that her air of unrelieved sorrow began at length to bewilder him."
Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, p. 297
As I've mentioned previously, the latter part of Swann's Way features a lengthy, if insightful, discussion of Swann's struggle to understand Odette. In this case I've just pulled out one line. How often in literature and film is the default setting that women have "unrelieved sorrow" (at least the interesting ones)? Of course, this goes back to my well-documented fascination with dark European actresses with terrible secrets. Beyond that, is there some essential truth to this view or is it one of those essential tropes of popular culture? If it's true is it because women truly are more emotionally sophisticated and sensitive than men are, and the general horror of life wears them down more quickly? Or is it just the general horror of living with men? I remember sitting in a coffeeshop in Madrid once - allegedly working, but mainly girl watching - and I was struck (and should been struck) by the fact that most of the women were of two types: breathtakingly beautiful young women or dramatically weathered old women bent into question marks by the weight of the world. And I remember thinking at the time - is this what living with a Spanish man does to you? In a larger sense, is this what living with all men does to women? Or is this all mythology, partially promoted by women themselves, in an attempt to exoticize their lives? As Swann himself points out later on, "People don't know when they are happy. They're never so unhappy as they think they are." (373)
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