My Year With Proust - Day 273

   As a rule these handsome "supers" had been his mistresses but were no longer (as was Mme d'Arpajon's case) or were on the point of ceasing to be.  It may well have been that the glamour which the Duchess enjoyed in their eyes and the hope of being invited to her house, though they themselves came thoroughly aristocratic backgrounds, if of the second rank, had prompted them, even more than the good looks and generosity of the Duke, to yield to his desires.  Not that the Duchess would have placed any insuperable obstacle in the way of their crossing her threshold: she was aware that in more than one of them she had found an ally thanks to whom she had obtained countless things which she wanted but which M. de Guermantes pitilessly denied his wife so long as he was not in love with someone else.  And so the reason why they were not received by the Duchess until their liaison was already far advanced lay principally in the fact that the Duke, each time he embarked on a love affair, had imagined no more than a brief fling, as a reward for which he considered an invitation from his wife excessive.  And yet he found himself offering this as the price for far less, for a first kiss in fact, because he had met with unexpected resistance or, on the contrary, because there had been no resistance.

Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way, pp. 497-498

Several times I've found myself flagging a section for inclusion mainly because I thought that it was a necessary, albeit worthy, precursor to a section that I found more interesting.  Essentially, what Proust wrote next resonated with me more, but I thought that you needed to have seen the lead up.  In this particular instance Proust is talking about the innumerable affairs of M. de Guermantes and their relationship to the social world of his wife, Mme de Guermantes, but I think his next point about love is more interesting.  We'll get to that point tomorrow, inshallah.  That said, I feel I've been dropping the ball on the blog lately, not because of a waning interest in Proust but mainly because I've been so insanely busy lately: in various planning stages for four foreign trips; rehearsing for Kerry's play (more on that soon, doubtless); two trips to Canada for CFL games; some prep work for the "Honey Boy" and Core Talks; and somewhere in there I've been plowing through a virtual pile (I only accept online submissions) of papers.  So, I'm behind on Proust - and let's not even get started on how far behind I am on the epics project.  Sigh.  There used to be around a two hundred page gap between where I was reading in Proust and what I was focusing on for writing on Proust (and sometimes it covered two different books) but now I've managed to catch up with myself, which means that I need to carve off a couple days to immerse myself in Remembrance of Things Past; as we've discussed, Proust is not something you can just lightly pick up.

Now, the point I wanted to make before that unplanned confession was that often when I look at a passage for a second time I discover that it has merit far beyond merely a stepping stone to another section, and this is one of those moments.  While some of the women who succumbed to the charms of the M. de Guermantes did so because of "the good looks and generosity of the Duke", an even greater number did so because it was an avenue to his wife and thus into society.  In the end, I suppose this is not that different from the high school girl who gives into the clumsy groping of a boy simply because he has a nice car, and losing your virginity in that backseat is worthwhile if you can be seen in said car pulling up to the football game.  Happily, or sadly, I avoided all of this drama because I owned an AMC Pacer and no one was putting out for the honor of being seen in that wreck.  All this means, I guess, that most people don't actually act any differently in responsible adulthood than they did as a teenager, which is a depressing thought (and might partially explain why tens of millions of people are voting for Trump).  Having said all that, I find the thought processes of Mme. de Guermantes even more interesting, because she clearly knew about these affairs and why her husband was, I'm sure casually, promoting these women for the guest list ("oh, you remember, my dear, that plain woman we met at the races? Her cousin mentioned her name to me again the other day at that dreadful party we suffered through, practically begged me to talk to you about her, to get her out of the house, the poor thing . . .")  Clearly, Mme de Guermantes isn't fooled by this charade - and M. de Guermantes knows that she is not - but it is part of the play acting that dictate the interaction between couples, then as now.  Certainly part of this performance works to re-enforce the strength of her position because she is the gate keeper to admission into society, even if those women passing through the gate (at least temporarily) are the mistresses of her husband.  It also speaks to the feigned weary, worldly sophistication of the upper classes.  In addition, I would argue, it appears that Mme de Guermantes viewed these women as potential partners, or at least tools, in her long-standing battle with her husband.  As Proust reminds us, "she was aware that in more than one of them she had found an ally thanks to whom she had obtained countless things which she wanted but which M. de Guermantes pitilessly denied his wife . . ."  As my good friend Mike would opine, relationships are stupid.