"'I say, though, what about Swann?' objected M. d'Argencourt, who having at last succeeded in grasping the point of his cousin's remarks, was impressed by their shrewdness and was racking his brains for instances of men who had fallen in love with women in whom he himself would have seen no attraction.
'Oh, but Swann's case was quite different,' the Duchess protested. 'It was a great surprise, I admit, because she was a bit of an idiot, but she was never ridiculous, and she was at one time pretty.'
'Oh, oh!' muttered Mme de Villeparisis.
'You never thought so? Surely, she had some charming points, very fine eyes, good hair and she used to dress and still dresses wonderfully. Nowadays, I quite agree, she's unspeakable, but she has been a lovely woman in her time. Not that that made me any less sorry when Charles married her, because it was so unnecessary.
The Duchess had not intended to say anything out of the common, but as M. d'Argencourt began to laugh she repeated these last words - either because she thought them amusing or because she thought it nice of him to laugh - and looked up at him with a coy smile, to add the enchantment of her femininity to that of her wit. She went on:
'Yes, really, it wasn't worth the trouble, was it? Still, after all, she did have some charm and I can quite understand why people might fall for her, but if you saw Robert's young lady, I assure you you'd simply die laughing. Oh, I know somebody's going to quote Augier at me: "What matters the bottle so long as one gets drunk?" Well, Robert may have got drunk all right, but he certainly hasn't shown much taste in his choice of a bottle!' . . ."
Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way, p. 235
Proust finds himself at a party where there is much snide trashing of his friend Robert's mistress, and, not surprisingly, I suppose, Mme Swann's name pops up in the conversation. The Duchess quotes a line she attributes to Augier (although it apparently is from Alfred de Musset), "What matters the bottle so long as one gets drunk?" I am more familiar with the Hoosier equivalent, "In the dark all cats are gray." Both lines are pretty disdainful of women obviously; that is, it doesn't matter what woman you're with because they're essentially fungible (although I guess the Augier/de Musset line is perversely slightly more optimistic). Having said that, I'm more appalled by the hateful, judgmental ignorance of the conversation than the corrupted aphorisms. And this is true both in this specific Proustian example and in the larger sense. How many men (I'm saying men in this instance, but doubtless it is true of both sexes) end perfectly happy, functioning relationships with a woman simply because of societal/family constraints (and that would consider all levels of society and family). Beyond the great emotional implications the math alone would show you how dumb the decision is. If someone makes you happy when you are with them, which accounts for 90% of the total waking non-working hours of your life (and, for that matter, might make you happy at work and even in your dreams) why would you drop them because of the opinion of someone who you might see an average of ten minutes a week? I suppose we've all been dumped (I know I have) at one time or another because of the opinion of someone who probably didn't actually know us at all. It is the more casually dressed equivalent of the "polite" society Proust reports. We are an idiotic species.
No comments:
Post a Comment