"Perhaps I shouldn't say it, because after all she is my niece and I have no absolute proof that she was unfaithful to him, but there were any number of stories. Oh! yes, there were, and I know for a fact there was something between her and an officer at Meseglise. Robert wanted to challenge him. It was because of all this that Robert joined up - the war came to him as a deliverance from the misery of his family life: if you want my opinion, he wasn't killed, he got himself killed. Do you think she felt any grief? Not a scrap, she even astonished me by the extraordinary cynicism with which she displayed her indifference, and this distressed me very much, because I was really extremely fond of poor Robert. Perhaps this will surprise you, because people have a wrong idea of my character, but even now I still think of him sometimes - I never forget anybody. He never said a word to me, but he saw very clearly that I guessed everything. Do you suppose, if she had loved her husband the least little bit, that she could stoically endure like this to be in the same drawing room as the woman with whom he was desperately in love for so many years - indeed one may say 'always,' for I am quite certain that he never gave her up, even during the war. Why, she would fly at her throat!" exclaimed the Duchess, forgetting that she herself, in arranging for Rachel to be invited and so setting the stage for the drama which she judged to be inevitable if it were true that Gilberte had loved Robert, had acted cruelly. "No, in my opinion," the Duchess concluded, "she is a bitch." Such an expression on the lips of the Duchesse de Guermantes was rendered possible by the downward path which she was following, from the polished society of the Guermantes to that of her new actress friends, and came to her all the more easily because she grafted it on to an eighteenth century mode of speech which she thought of as broad and racy - and then had she not always believed that to her all things were permitted? But the actual choice of the word was dictated by the hatred which she felt for Gilberte, by an irresistible wish to strike her at least in effigy if she could not attack her with physical blows. And at the same time the Duchess thought that somehow the word justified the whole manner in which she conducted herself towards Gilberte, or rather conducted hostilities against Gilberte, in society and in the family and even where pecuniary interests were concerns such as the succession to Robert's estate.
This savage attack on Gilberte struck me as quite unwarranted, but sometimes we pronounce a judgment which receives later from facts of which we were ignorant and which we could not have guessed an apparent justification, and Mme de Guermantes tirade perhaps belonged to this category.
Marcel Proust, Time Regained, pp. 1082-1083
Marcel is surprised by a vitriolic attack on Gilberte by Mme de Guermantes. According to her Gilberte was completely unmoved by the death of her husband Robert in the war. Not only that, but, at least in Mme de Guermantes's narrative, Robert had joined the war because of his unhappiness. Again, in the words of Mme de Guermantes: "It was because of all this that Robert joined up - the war came to him as a deliverance from the misery of his family life: if you want my opinion, he wasn't killed, he got himself killed." I don't know if I'm in the right frame of mind to dissect this passage. I just got back from a trip to Africa where in the space of a few hours I found myself trying to process taking care of one of my students who had grown sick, the happy news that my great friends Heidi and Andy had third first child, the death of Gary Beatrice (one of my oldest and closest friends), and my own birthday. It's left me more than a bit emotionally bruised. Hell, I've been depressed all day over the passing of Dolores O'Riordan, although, to be fair, I was a big fan of the Cranberries (and this week's Discography post is writing itself; or rewriting itself because it's already finished). A couple times in this Proustian quest I've raised the question of what we owe the dead. Certainly, we owe them memory, even if the memories we carry with us are tainted by our own desire or vanity. Do we owe them decorum? Do we owe them anger? Was Mme de Guermantes so angry at Gilberte ("No, in my opinion," the Duchess concluded, "she is a bitch.") because she owed it to Robert to show anger at that moment, or was she showing him dishonor by venting her spleen at Gilberte? Oddly, despite his love (or at least at this point friendship) for Gilberte, Marcel proposes that maybe the Duchess may simply know something he doesn't know: "This savage attack on Gilberte struck me as quite unwarranted, but sometimes we pronounce a judgment which receives later from facts of which we were ignorant and which we could not have guessed an apparent justification, and Mme de Guermantes tirade perhaps belonged to this category."
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