My Year With Proust - Day 46

"It was not evil that gave her the idea of pleasure, that seemed to her attractive; it was pleasure, rather, that seemed evil.  And as, every time that she indulged in it, pleasure came to her attended by evil thoughts such as, ordinarily, had no place in her virtuous mind, she came at length to see in pleasure itself something diabolical, to identify it with Evil."

Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, p. 174

And so we come to the end of this odd incident with Mlle Vinteuil. On the surface level this seems like another example of classic Catholic-engendered guilt, although I think that Proust, as is his wont, is pushing a lot deeper.  So much to say here.

One wonders if the key here is not that sex, or in this case sex outside the bounds of polite society, is evil as much as it's freedom.