In any case, whatever the modifications that had occurred recently in her life and that might perhaps have explained why it was that she now so readily accorded to my momentary and purely physical desire what at Balbec she had refused with horror to allow to my love, and even more surprising one manifested itself in Albertine that same evening as soon as her caresses had procured in me the satisfaction which she could not fail to notice and which, indeed, I had been afraid might provoke in her the instinctive movement of revulsion and offended modesty which Gilberte had made at a similar moment behind the laurel shrubbery in the Champs-Elysees.
The exact opposite happened. Already, when I had made her lie on my bed and I had begun to fondle her, Albertine had assumed an air which I did not remember in her, of docile good will, of an almost childish simplicity. Obliterating every trace of customary preoccupations and pretensions, the moment preceding pleasure, similar in this respect to the moment that follows death, had restored to her rejuvenated features what seemed like the innocence of earliest childhood. And no doubt everyone whose special talent is suddenly brought into play becomes modest, diligent and charming, especially if by this talent such persons know that they are giving us a great pleasure, are themselves made happy by it, and want us to enjoy it to the full. But in this new expression in Albertine's face there was more than disinterestedness and professional conscientiousness and generosity, there was a sort of conventional and unexpected zeal; and it was further than to her own childhood, it was to the infancy of her race that she had reverted. Very different from myself, who had looked for nothing more than a physical alleviation which I had finally secured, Albertine seemed to feel that it would indicate a certain coarseness on her part were she to think that this material pleasure could be unaccompanied by a moral sentiment or was to be regarded as terminating anything. She, who had earlier been in so great a hurry, now, doubtless because she felt that kiss implied love and that love took precedence over all other duties, said when I reminded her of her dinner:
"Oh, but that doesn't matter in the least. I've got plenty of time."
Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way, pp. 379-380
Things continue to get more intense as Marcel and Albertine canoodle on his bed. Seldom has any author more gently described an erection. ". . . her caresses had procured in me the satisfaction which she could not fail to notice and which, indeed, I had been afraid might provoke in her the instinctive movement of revulsion and offended modesty which Gilberte had made at a similar moment behind the laurel shrubbery in the Champs-Elysees.. In this case, however, as we read between the lines, clearly there is more than just an erection, as they "fondle" each other and Proust secures a "physical alleviation." And, classically, and typically male, he then points out that it's late and doesn't she have someplace to be. It's difficult to read the sentences, "Obliterating every trace of customary preoccupations and pretensions, the moment preceding pleasure, similar in this respect to the moment that follows death, had restored to her rejuvenated features what seemed like the innocence of earliest childhood," without thinking that he's achieved orgasm. On the next page he continues, "She seemed embarrassed at the idea of getting up and going immediately after what had happened, embarrassed from a sense of propriety . . ." It is a delicate description, and one that would have had to have been considered very adult a century ago.
What I find more interesting is Proust's dead-on comments about the meaning of a sexual act. While he might have been talking specifically about his time with Albertine, I would suggest that it is true on a much more global scale. "Very different from myself, who had looked for nothing more than a physical alleviation which I had finally secured, Albertine seemed to feel that it would indicate a certain coarseness on her part were she to think that this material pleasure could be unaccompanied by a moral sentiment or was to be regarded as terminating anything. She, who had earlier been in so great a hurry, now, doubtless because she felt that kiss implied love . . ." Essentially, he's making the point that whereas he would have viewed them having sex as the end of something (for instance, going back to an earlier discussion, of a military campaign) Albertine felt it was the beginning of something. In the end, is that actually the difference between men and women?
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