My Years With Proust - Day 623

When the laundry-girl must have said to her friends, "Just fancy, I'd never have believed it, but the young lady is one too," to me was not merely a vice hitherto unsuspected by them that they added to Albertine's person, a person like themselves, speaking the same language, and this, by making her the compatriot of other women, made her even more alien to myself, proved that what I had possessed of her, what I carried in my heart, was only quite a small part of her, and that the rest, which was made so extensive by not being merely that thing which is already mysteriously important enough, an individual desire, but being mysteriously important enough, an individual desire, but being shared with others, she had always concealed from me, had kept me away from, as a woman might conceal from me that she was a native of an enemy country and a spy, and far more treacherously even than a spy, for the latter deceives us only as to her nationality, whereas Albertine had deceived me as to her profoundest humanity, the fact that she did not belong to ordinary humankind, but to an alien race which moves among it, hides itself among it and never merges with it.

Marcel Proust, The Fugitive, p. 537

I'm in the process of finishing up my self-portrait and concomitant presentation for my Concepts of the Self class so I don't have too much time to reflect upon this passage.  As I've said before, in my first and second year courses I often model assignments (never behavior, no one needs to act like me) so that the students can see what I'm looking for; professors often have no idea how their assignments actually play out and it would benefit them to take a stab at working them up themselves.  Anyway, I'm thinking about Cynthia Freeland's discussion, in her Portraits & Persons, about the different selves: Bodily, Moral, Reflective and Relational. While Albertine's true identity, if we can believe the sensational stories that Aime sent along, is different than what Marcel knew (although not necessarily different than what he imagined), and could be viewed through the four lenses that Freeland discusses.  At this point the one that jumps out at me is the Relational Self; essentially, that just as the self is a construct, it is a concept shaped and defined by the relationships in our life.  Proust records, "When the laundry-girl must have said to her friends, 'Just fancy, I'd never have believed it, but the young lady is one too,' to me was not merely a vice hitherto unsuspected by them that they added to Albertine's person, a person like themselves, speaking the same language . . ."  Albertine is "one too," and is thus defined by this relationship, both in regards to how she constructs her sense of self, but also the contest wherein others try and define her. I'm thinking about all this because my self-portrait relates, tangentially, to the question of faith, and my conversion a couple years ago suddenly redefined my relational self, both internally and externally.