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.
Themes
Time and Memory
Swann’s Way is a novel about subjectivity. Marcel, the narrator, loses himself in memories of his subjective experiences to better understand himself. The passage of time and the importance of memories become central to his exploration. Time has ceased to be an objective reality. The more he investigates his memories, the more he realizes that the world is infinitely complex and nuanced. Even something as objective as the length of a day can be experienced differently by different people, depending on their emotional state. This difference fascinates Marcel. The difference is even apparent when he compares the experiences of his youth to those of his present self. His present experience is dictated by his past, meaning that his present self exists only as an accumulation of memories and experiences over time. Identity is a fusion of time and memory, providing the writer with a lifetime of material in which each memory is as important as the next.
For Marcel, Time and Memory exist in tension. The more time passes, the more memories he accrues. The more memories, the more time he spends revisiting them. Marcel’s narration becomes a way to untangle this tension. By exploring each memory, by conveying the exact way in which this passage of time unfolded, Marcel can create a document of his life. In this respect, Marcel’s narration is self-serving. The narration is Marcel’s attempt to understand his past through his memories. The past is an unknowable place. Memories can become corrupted by time, so he explores every detail of his memories to lock them into place. The narration is an exercise in self-reflection, a purposeful attempt to relieve the tension between time and memory to understand the present.
For Marcel, memories are so important that they cannot be allowed to exist only in the past. The structure of the novel reveals the important relationship between time and memory. The repetition of certain events and the comparisons drawn between these similar actions provide meaning to Marcel. Swann’s relationship with Odette, for example, teaches Marcel about his love for Gilberte. The return to memories is what gives meaning to the passage of time and the separation between past and present is what gives meaning to Marcel’s memories.
Jealous Love
Swann’s Way portrays love in such a way that jealousy is never far away. Even at a young age, Marcel envies anyone who understands love. He studies romantic novels and stories, jealous of the emotional experiences enjoyed by the characters. He craves a similar experience, which partially explains the speed with which he falls in love with Gilberte. Marcel cannot even correctly remember the color of Gilberte’s eyes, but he is so desperate to experience love that he ignores this fact. The mature Marcel, the narrator of the story, dwells on this intersection between jealousy and love. The theme becomes ever more important as Marcel speculates on how the most intense positive emotions such as love are capable of inspiring equally as intense negative emotions such as jealousy.
The most obvious interplay between jealousy and love occurs during the latter stages of Swann’s pursuit of Odette. He is not initially interested in her. But after they have a brief romantic affair, their positions change. Odette loses interest in Swann. Once this occurs, Odette begins to retreat from Swann’s life. He sees her less and less, which makes him very jealous. Swann convinces himself that he loves Odette, even though he has little understanding of her character. He is jealous of what he has been denied and he feels entitled to her affection due to his elevated social status and the patriarchal nature of the society. Swann’s love for Odette is jealous, fixated on what he cannot have rather than celebrating what they have together.
The irony of Swann’s entitlement is that he gets everything he wants. Even though his story ends with his realization that he and Odette are ill-suited for one another, Marcel the narrator has already explained that Swann and Odette marry. Swann’s jealousy is satisfied in the most unsatisfying way. He marries a woman with a scandalous past who continues to conduct an illicit affair with his friend. After convincing himself that he was in love, Swann must spend the rest of his life dealing with the ironic consequences of his jealousy.
Sensation and Sentimentality
Marcel’s narration is a fusion of sensation and sentimentality. He explores memory by identifying a certain sentiment (such as a feeling of love or longing) and reviewing the sensory information that he felt during that moment. When he first meets Gilberte, for example, he provides a thorough account of everything he felt. He remembers the sights, sounds, smells, and the taste of the air. By documenting these sensations in such a manner, Marcel creates vital connections with other moments in his life. Given the vivacity with which he experiences the world, a similar taste or sound can transport Marcel to a place in his past. The most famous example of this link between sensation and sentimentality is the taste of the madeleine dipped in tea. On tasting the madeleine, Marcel is overwhelmed with emotion. He is transported through space and time and finds himself sitting with his aunt in Combray, performing the same ritual.
The need to document every sight, sound, taste, and other sensory experience adds a strange urgency to Marcel’s narration. He is desperate to remember everything, which means that his visits to his past are often a list of sensory experiences from which he hopes to derive some new and unexplored sentimentality. His description of the town of Combray, for example, is exhaustive. The people, places, and geography of the town are described in their sensory influence on the young Marcel. He remembers the town through sensory experiences, such as the light dancing on the tiles or the sound of a chattering neighbor’s voice.
Marcel the narrator attempts to understand his past through detailed and interconnected examples of sensation and sentimentality. This process characterizes him as a nostalgic, wistful figure. He is revisiting these memories with the added perspective of maturity and finding new meaning in old sensations. While they may not seem to move the story forward, the thoroughness of the memories speaks to the growth and development of Marcel the narrator compared to his younger self.
