The Cambridge Introduction to Marcel Proust - Adam A. Watt [66]
Following the news of Gilberte’s marriage come rumours of Saint-Loup’s homosexuality (F, 762; AD, 2104). When he hears a little later that Robert is thought to be keeping mistresses, the Narrator has his own suspicions; Jupien, then Aimé, helps to confirm his hunch: Robert’s marriage is one of duty and form, and vitally linked to Gilberte’s fortune. She eventually discovers a letter addressed to Robert, signed ‘Bobette’, who the Narrator discovers to be Morel, on whom Robert spends great sums of Gilberte’s money. Her uncertainties regarding the letter replay her father’s when faced with Odette’s letter to Forcheville; they also recall Charlus faced with the letter from Léa to Morel, which referred to him in the feminine, a gender shift mirrored in the signature ‘Bobette’. Proust tightens the screw yet further: Robert is attracted to Morel because he resembles his ex-mistress, Rachel (whose name anagrammatically is found in ‘Charlie’). Robert asks Gilberte to dress as a man, leaving one lock of hair free at the front to resemble Morel, a request that recalls Gilberte’s mother’s transvestism in the Miss Sacripant painting, whilst Gilberte, unaware of Robert’s preferences, seeks to please him by dressing like Rachel. The patterns of recurrence and return that shape all the novel’s relationships reach their apogee in these pages. The Narrator’s position in this wretched echo-chamber is one of sadness and disappointment, not because he is judgemental of Saint-Loup’s choices but because he has lost a friend: now that men arouse Saint-Loup’s desires, they ‘no longer inspire his friendship’ (F, 791; AD, 2122).
The Narrator does, however, grow closer to Gilberte. Through her, he renews links to his past in Combray. Spending time together at Tansonville, he discovers that past habits and assumptions had veiled realities quite different from what he had believed to be true as a boy (the source of the Vivonne can be found; the two ways, Guermantes and Swann, can be taken in on the same walk; Gilberte did in fact love him when they played together and desired him again upon seeing him from the Guermantes’ porch when he took her for Mlle d’Eporcheville).6
The Fugitive tests our readerly resilience as we work through the Narrator’s neurotic search for closure on his relationship; it tests our powers of recall and brings back into focus many disparate episodes of the Search, drawing together many of its narrative threads. And it shows us how contingency and desire are forces far more influential than the powers of the analytical mind that seeks to account for and contain them.
Time Regained
Amongst the revelations of the Narrator’s stay with Gilberte at Tansonville is a strong sense that he lacks literary talent. Ill, he spends years in a sanatorium, visits Paris for a brief spell in 1914 and returns in 1916, but these episodes are not narrated in chronological order. We hear first of his impressions of the city in 1916, fashion trends and the new composition of society. We then return to 1914 and Saint-Loup’s and Gilberte’s respective, revealing accounts of the impact of the war. Jumping forward again two years, the Narrator strolls with Charlus while the latter expounds his particular, pro-German world view. They part ways; seeking respite the Narrator eventually finds a hotel run, it transpires, by Jupien as a male brothel. He voyeuristically witnesses Charlus chained and flogged by a hired thug. The scene is enfolded in reflections on desire and morality. Saint-Loup is killed in action and soon Morel is arrested for desertion. The Narrator retires once more to a sanatorium, returning to