My gratitude was even greater when a cyclist brought me a note from her bidding me be patient, and full of the charming expressions that she was in the habit of using. "My darling dear Marcel, I return less quickly than this cyclist, whose bike I should like to borrow in order to be with you sooner. How could you imagine that I might be angry or that I could enjoy anything better than to be with you? It will be nice to go out, just the two of us together; it would be nicer still if we never went out except together. The ideas you get into your head? What a Marcel! What a Marcel! Always and ever your Albertine."
The dresses that I bought for her, the yacht of which I had spoken to her, the Fortuny towns - all these things, having in this obedience on Albertine's part not their recompense but their complement, appeared to me now as so many privileges that I exercised; for the duties and expenses of a master are part of his dominion, and define it, prove it, fully as much as his rights. And these rights which she acknowledged were precisely what gave my expenditure its true character: I had a woman of my own, who, at the first word I sent her out of the blue, informed me deferentially by telephone that she was coming, that she was allowing herself to be brought home, at once. I was more of a master than I had supposed. More of a master, in other words more of a slave. I no longer felt the slightest impatience to see Albertine. The certainty that she was at this moment engaged in shopping with Francoise, that she would return with her at an approaching moment which I would willingly have postponed, lit up like a calm and radiant star a period of time which I would now have been far better pleased to spend alone.
Marcel Proust, The Captive, pp. 153-154
"I was more of a master than I had supposed. More of a master, in other words more of a slave."
This passage, as much as any one in Remembrance of Things Past, nicely encapsulates Marcel's painfully conflicted relationship with Albertine. It ranges from the charming to the dismissive. It includes one of the few times where the protagonist is actually identified by name in Albertine's sweet note: "The ideas you get into your head? What a Marcel! What a Marcel!" Within a few sentences Proust had passed on to, "I no longer felt the slightest impatience to see Albertine." As we all know, hate is not the opposite of love, indifference is. We all run that gamut from running red lights as we rush to meet our lover (in the early over-heated days of the relationship) to hoping that she stays out later with the ladies at the book club so that we can be plausibly asleep when she returns (in the cold ashes stage of the relationship). Nevertheless, Proust continues to fret over the relationship, and we continue to read between the lines to make sense of his relationship with Albertine. Maybe the problem is that we're framing the question incorrectly. Maybe it's not really a relationship at all, and not simply because it's a well-structured booty call (which is, after all, still a relationship). The key to this conundrum, at least for me on yet another rainy Vermont morning, are these two lines I quoted above: "I was more of a master than I had supposed. More of a master, in other words more of a slave." Do masters and slaves have a relationship? On some level Marcel must understand the perversity of his love of Albertine. In the antebellum South it was clearly a hell of a lot better to be a slaver owner than a slave, obviously and undeniably, but it was also almost certainly true that the reality of being a master was corruptive and dehumanizing in its own fashion - which in turn made the situation even worse for the slaves as the inhumanity of the institution was holistic and self-perpetuating. We've talked before about how the Anarchists called for free love because they viewed 19th century marriage as little more than legalized prostitution, if not it's own form of slavery. Truthfully, I don't even like to use the word slavery in this context as it clumsily hints at the suffering of one but in the process cheapens the suffering of another; maybe it would be better to describe 19th century marriage as a perverse form of indentured servitude, where you pay a price, some aspect of your freedom, on the off-chance that you'll achieve slightly greater freedom in a different world (leaving your father's house for your husband's). It seems to me that Marcel is recognizing that he is becoming a slaver, not completely to his love for Albertine, but rather to the addictive nature of his power over her, which is in itself corruptive and dehumanizing. Proust writes, "And these rights which she acknowledged were precisely what gave my expenditure its true character: I had a woman of my own, who, at the first word I sent her out of the blue, informed me deferentially by telephone that she was coming, that she was allowing herself to be brought home, at once." So, what becomes important to Marcel are not her sweet words, but rather the fact that she had to come home when he asked her to do so. Even if you know the drug is bad for you, it doesn't mean you can stop craving it.
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