47 pages • 1 hour read
Marcel ProustSwann's Way: In Search of Lost Time, Volume One
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1913A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
Marcel
Marcel is the narrator of the novel. Though he never refers to himself by name, the narrator of later books of In Search of Lost Time names himself Marcel. Marcel is a thinly-veiled stand-in for the author of Swann’s Way, Marcel Proust. However, Marcel differs in several ways from the author. He introduces himself to the audience through one of these differences. Marcel complains about his insomnia, a condition that has plagued him since his childhood. He stays up late each night, just as he did when he was young. As a boy, these late nights were motivated by the desire to experience his mother’s kiss each evening. On nights when she did not or could not kiss Marcel, he felt anxious and unable to sleep. His mother’s kiss is an important assurance of warmth and affection.
Marcel tells the reader that he is obsessed with his memories. After dipping a madeleine in a cup of tea, he is nearly overwhelmed by a flood of nostalgia. This blend of the physical sensation and the nostalgic sentiment transports him back to a time when he experienced the same taste. He digs deeper into these sensory reveries, plunging further and further into the past to understand the construction of his psyche by piecing together the experiences that contributed to his personality. Marcel prefers beautiful images and ideas over physical objects. The magic lantern given to him as a child is an example. It cast images on his wall. He constructs stories in his mind based on the projection of ethereal, ghostly images that have no substance of their own. The images are made of light, and these spectral images are more valuable to Marcel than the lantern itself. A similar experience occurs in the local church, where the stained-glass windows and tapestries are considered beautiful not only for their artistry but for the stories and emotions they stir in Marcel’s thoughts. Sentimentality dominates his life.
Swann’s story is important to Marcel not only because Swann embodies many of the qualities and beliefs that Marcel values but because Swann shares many of his flaws. Marcel discusses Swann and Odette because their story is tragic rather than romantic. In Swann’s obsessions and fixations, Marcel finds a relatable figure. His pursuit of Gilberte eerily echoes Swann’s pursuit of Gilberte’s mother, Odette. As with the madeleines dipped in tea, the idea of Swann transports Marcel into a world of love, romance, and emotion that is in the past but not left behind. His narration becomes inextricable from his character at this moment, illustrating the obsessions and regrets that define the arc of the story and the shape of Marcel as a man. Marcel, like Swann, does not find happiness. Through the examination of their journeys, however, Marcel finds meaning.
Charles Swann
Charles Swann is the title character of Swann’s Way. The novel is named after a walking path that, in turn, is named after Swann’s property. These steps of removal between the novel’s title, the path, and the character echo Swann’s relationship to the narrative. He is not the central figure, as he is discussed by Marcel only concerning how his life influenced Marcel. Swann is a notable part of the landscape of Marcel’s life, just as the footpath is a notable part of the geography of Combray. To take a shortcut toward understanding Marcel as a character, the audience must understand Swann, just as they might take the titular Swann’s Way as a shortcut through Combray.
Swann is complicated. He is a womanizer but also a helpless romantic. He has climbed to the highest levels of Parisian society, yet he spends most of his time socializing with middle-class people. He comes to suspect Odette of being unfaithful to him, yet he marries her, and they have a daughter. Swann represents the nuanced nature of society in the era. For all the emphasis placed on social standing and manners, Swann sidesteps etiquette to pursue whatever his heart desires. Much like Marcel, he is prone to bouts of sentimentality that shape the course of his life. Social standing, manners, and art are all important to Swann, but he is ready to cast them aside when he feels emotional.
His relationship with Odette is a key example of his sentimentality. Swann is described as a man of considerable intelligence. He is a valued dinner party guest for this reason; his wit, knowledge, and insight are commendable. However, he is willing to overlook all the evidence that Odette is uninterested in him. Despite his intelligence, Swann pursues a doomed love. In this regard, he is a tragic hero. His strengths—ambition, intelligence, sociability, wealth—are undermined by his tragic flaw: sentimentality. Swann is everything a man in Parisian high society is meant to be. He is an example for others (such as Marcel) to follow. Yet he also demonstrates how hard work, intelligence, and opportunity are nothing in comparison to the power of love. Marcel focuses on Swann for precisely this reason, sympathizing with a fellow victim of sentimentality.
Perhaps the most tragic aspect of Swann’s character is his delusion. He loves an idealized version of Odette that he has created in his mind. Swann lives in a fantasy world, unable to recognize the truth about Odette because he makes no effort to understand the real person behind his imagined creation. Swann falls so completely for this idealized version of Odette that, when the real Odette no longer loves him, he is unable to resolve the cognitive dissonance in his mind. His idealized Odette would never stop loving him, so he cannot conceive of a world in which the real Odette would entertain such a thought. His dissonance turns first into jealousy and then into obsession. Unfortunately for Swann, he never resolves his problem. He marries Odette and they have a daughter, though his reputation is destroyed by his wife’s infidelities. In a way, Swann gets everything he wants. He marries Odette. However, he is unable to take any satisfaction from this apparent triumph.
Odette
Marcel confesses that he has spent very little time in Odette’s company. He knows her through rumor, gossip, and inference. To Marcel, Odette is more Swann’s wife or Gilberte’s mother than a person in her own right. He knows more about Odette from his parents and friends than from personal experience. Odette is the subject of many scandalous rumors about her past, which may or may not be true. The version of Odette that emerges from the narrative ironically contrasts with the other main characters and events of the novel. The madeleine dipped in tea is important to Marcel because he remembers the many times he had similar experiences earlier in life. Combray is a formative place for him because of the many experiences he had in the town. Swann is vital for understanding Marcel because Marcel feels he understands Swann. None of this can be said about Odette. She is a pivotal character in a novel about emotion, memory, and experience even though the narrator and central character has little emotion, memory, or experience regarding her.
Given Marcel’s obvious sympathies toward Swann, the reader should not be surprised that Odette is the closest thing the novel has to a villain. Her villainous nature is expressed through the subtle ways in which she transcends social expectations. Odette defies expectations regarding sex and class. In the moralistic society, she is beset by rumors that she has a scandalous past. Odette gives these rumors no weight. She has sex with whomever she pleases, ignoring the way people speak about her behind her back. These rumors extend to homosexuality and, even in this moralistic society, Odette confesses to Swann that she has had homosexual experiences in the past. This transgression of social expectations regarding sex is made all the starker by Odette’s social class. Unlike other promiscuous figures such as Swann, she lacks the money and social status to transgress without fear of repercussion. She is not an aristocrat who feels that she is above custom and law. That she should keep aristocratic company is another slight against a society that wishes she would learn her place. Marcel’s subtle narration—expressed through the mortified reactions of the other characters and his sympathy toward Swann—casts these transgressions as examples of Odette’s villainy. He presents her as the antagonist because of how she refuses to be bound by the society and the public figures whom Marcel admires. Through her refusal, however, Odette emerges as one of the strongest, most defiant figures in the novel. She refuses to be bound by the expectations of her lovers, society, and even the narrator.
Aunt Léonie
Marcel’s Aunt Léonie is a formative figure in his life. Following the death of her husband, she retreats from society. She blockades herself in her room and experiences the world secondhand through stories from her friends and servants. While Marcel is defined by love and sentimentality, always experienced firsthand, his aunt is defined by withdrawal and grief, her experience filtered through the sympathetic people who insulate her from the world. Given the amount of time Marcel spends with Léonie at a young age, she provides him with an alternative model for existence. Marcel remembers Léonie so specifically and so exactly because he does not want to grow up to be like her.
Similarly, Léonie is focused on the present in a bid to escape her past. Léonie is a widow. The past is a place filled with memories of her husband. She does not want to be reminded of her loss, so she focuses relentlessly on the present. This focus leads to her hypochondria. She diagnoses herself with many ailments because she worries constantly about her own body, focusing on physical pain as a distraction from the emotional pain of her past. She seeks the sympathy of other as a balm for her grief, hoping that people will take pity on her and distract her from her past.
