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.
Symbols & Motifs
Food
Food is one of the main ways Marcel revisits his past. The taste of food is a symbolic connection between Time and Memory, transporting the older Marcel to his younger self whenever he encounters a familiar taste. The madeleine dipped in tea is one of the novel’s most potent symbols, speaking to the power of food to inspire a nearly overwhelming rush of emotion and memory. Food symbolizes the sensation of taste, allowing Marcel to link the memories of his past with the reality of his present. The mundanity of food also plays into this symbolism. As Marcel states, he has eaten madeleines dipped in tea on many occasions. Only when he finally understands the symbolic link between the two points in his life does the taste of the food inspire a literary significance.
Food also symbolizes the importance of social events in the novel’s French middle-class society. Swann is noted for his absence from the social dinners hosted by the Verdurins. He attends the salon, but not the dinners. When he is eventually ostracized by the Verdurins, he begins to desire an invitation to the events that he previously skipped. The reason is that these meals are far more than just the necessary consumption of food. Dining together illustrates how eating is a bonding event. Food becomes a symbolic facilitator of the social interactions and conversations that follow, providing an excuse for sociability. When Swann declines the invitation to dine with others, his absence is marked. His unwillingness to eat with other people is taken as an insult and contributes to his social ostracization later in the novel.
The manufacture of food is also a symbolic indicator of the stratified nature of French society. Throughout the novel, Marcel remembers only working-class people preparing food and middle-class people consuming it. There is a clear delineation of labor between those who must sell their labor to the middle class and those who consume the product of this labor. For much of his youth, Marcel internalizes social stratification. He is shocked when he realizes that working-class people can live lives that are just as rewarding as middle-class people. The revelation of the existence of their inner lives symbolizes Marcel’s desire to look beyond the constraints of French society.
Music
Like food, music provides a symbolic link between Time and Memory. The characters understand this symbolic attachment. Swann, for example, begins to associate the sonata by Vinteuil with his love for Odette. Every time he hears the music, he is taken back to the first time he realized that he was in love with her, and he can relive the experience over again. This conscious awareness of the symbolic properties of music concludes for Swann when he attends a concert. At the time, his relationship with Odette is in dire straits. When the musician plays Vinteuil’s sonata, however, Swann is overwhelmed. The emotional distance he created between them immediately disappears. Even though he does not want to be taken back to the earlier period, Swann cannot help but be reminded of Odette. The sonata becomes a symbol of how time and memory trap Swann in a prison of his own emotions.
The concert is also a symbolic illustration of the fractured nature of French society. At the concert, Swann socializes with many members of the upper class. He speaks to counts and princesses, returning to the aristocratic circles that he abandoned in favor of the Verdurins’ salon. Odette must ask Swann for an invitation to such events, as neither she nor the Verdurins have the social cache needed to secure one for themselves. The guest list for the concert symbolizes the stratified nature of society, as certain members of the upper class take their invitation for granted while the aspiring members of the middle class must petition former lovers for tickets. Swann is welcomed back to the musical event as a long-lost friend but, when he hears the sonata, he is reminded of Odette, and he feels as though he is out of place. He longs for his middle-class experiences, even if they are beneath him in a social sense. His reluctant attendance at such events symbolizes the vapid nature of French society, in which the upper classes are not necessarily happier than their middle-class equivalents.
Music also illustrates the intellectual differences between Swann and Odette. When she asks for tickets to a concert, he scornfully reminds himself of how little she knows about music. For Odette, the concert is a purely social event. For Swann, the concert is an opportunity to appreciate music. This difference in perspective symbolizes the difference between the two characters. They are ill-matched, with very little in common, but Swann chastises himself for being patronizing and willfully ignores their differences in favor of his desire for Odette.
Combray
Marcel spends large parts of Swann’s Way recounting his memories of the town of Combray. In this sense, the town functions as a repository for Marcel’s memories. It is the place he returns to when attempting to explore the complexity of his past experiences. The town of Combray symbolizes everything he appreciates about memory. The overload of sensory detail that he can recall from his youth is a symbol of his desire to document everything and to derive meaning from this emotional documentation. Marcel rebuilds Combray in his mind, one memory at a time, and the process by which he does it is a symbolic expression of the theme of Time and Memory.
There are parts of Combray, however, where Marcel cannot go. There are lives lived in the town that he cannot access, either in a physical or an emotional sense. Marcel is forced to confront the limitations of his knowledge when he cannot peer into the emotional reality of Swann’s current relationship with Odette or Mademoiselle Vinteuil’s homosexual experiences. In these circumstances, Marcel is reduced to the role of voyeur. The town and its thriving community are, like almost everything else, endlessly nuanced. Marcel’s attempt to understand everything comes up against a symbolic and literal wall, as he cannot peer into the hidden and private lives of individuals, especially not as a child. The result is that the adult Marcel must attempt to fill in the blanks. The attempt to understand the private, unseen scandal of the past is a symbolic demonstration of the unknowability of much of existence. As much as Marcel wants to understand everything about everyone, some things are simply denied to him. Combray and the hidden lives of its inhabitants are an important symbol of this denial, illustrating the limits of Marcel’s understanding.
Combray is also presented as an unattainable place. The detailed descriptions of the geography present the town as a province of Marcel’s memory, one that is detached from the contemporary reality of Combray. The town still exists, but Marcel can never return to the place of his youth as too much has changed since then. Marcel himself has also changed, and he would experience the town differently. Two Combrays exist. The real Combray is the physical town, while the imagined Combray is the symbolic repository of Marcel’s memories, a province of his mind which will remain ephemeral and distant for the rest of his life. Combray is a symbolic reminder of how the passage of time changes people and places, turning the past into an unattainable and illusory destination.
