One might have thought that it was Mme de Marsantes who was entering the room, so salient at that moment was the woman whom a mistake on the part of Nature had enshrined in the body of M. de Charlus. Of course the Baron had made every effort to conceal this mistake and to assume a masculine appearance. But no sooner had he succeeded then, having meanwhile retained the same tastes, he acquired from this habit of feeling like a woman a new feminine appearance,due not to heredity but to his own way of living. And as he had gradually come to regard even social questions from the feminine point of view, and that quite unconsciously, for it is not only by dint of lying to other people but also by lying to oneself that one ceases to be aware that one is lying, although he had called up on his body to manifest (at the moment of his entering the Verdurins' house) all the courtesy of a great nobleman, that body, which had so well grasped what M. de Charlus had ceased to understand, displayed, to such an extent that the Baron would have deserved the epithet ladylike, all the seductions of a great lady. Besides, can one entirely separate M. de Charlus's appearance from the fact that sons, who do not always take after their fathers, even without inverts and even though seeks after women, may consummate upon their faces the profanation of their mothers? but let us not consider here a subject that deserves a chapter to itself: the Profanation of the Mother.
Although other reasons may have dictated this transformation of M. de Charlus, and purely physical ferments may have set his chemistry "working" and made his body gradually change into the category of women's bodies, nevertheless the change that we record here was of spiritual origin. By dint of imagining oneself to be ill one becomes ill, one grows thin, one is too weak to rise from one's bed, one suffers from nervous enteritis. By dint of thinking tenderly of men one becomes a woman, and an imaginary skirt hampers one's movements. The obsession, as in the other instance it can affect one's health, may in this instance alter one's sex.
Marcel Proust, Cities of the Plain, pp. 938-939
Proust continues his dissection of M. de Charlus, or maybe of himself (I really do need to do more research on Proust's own sexuality, but, as I've stated, I wanted this blog to be my response to Proust and not someone else's - although when I return to re-reading and re-commentary I'll include that aspect): "One might have thought that it was Mme de Marsantes who was entering the room, so salient at that moment was the woman whom a mistake on the part of Nature had enshrined in the body of M. de Charlus. Of course the Baron had made every effort to conceal this mistake and to assume a masculine appearance." As we've discussed, the fact that Proust was having this discussion in a novel a century ago is profound, and far outweighs the occasional clumsiness of his observations. As I always scold my students - while we need to take advantage of what we know or believe now, we can't give into the tyranny of the present. What continues to intrigue me, as it has throughout Remembrance of Things Past, is Proust's understanding of perception. Proust continues, "But no sooner had he succeeded then, having meanwhile retained the same tastes, he acquired from this habit of feeling like a woman a new feminine appearance,due not to heredity but to his own way of living." Marcel has determined that M. de Charlus is a homosexual, and now he perceives him completely differently.
Continuing a theme from yesterday, Proust once again ruminates on the influence of mothers in the development of homosexual men - and mentions, even including it in capital letters, the Profanation of the Mother. He suggests that he'd need a book to discuss the topic, which makes me think that it was a topic discussed at the time, and so this is another subject calling for later research.
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