Marcel Proust - novel - 1913 - pp. 28, 92, 93, 94, 102, 105, 109, 113, 119

Also referred to as Remembrance of Things Past, Marcel Proust’s seven-volume masterwork thematizes the inevitable passage, forgetting, and memory of time through a first-person narrator who recounts his memory of his experiences from youth to adulthood. Set in upper-class France and spanning the turn from the nineteenth to twentieth century, the novel meditates on topics including sleep, Jewishness, social class, love, homosexuality, art, writing, memory, and more.

The Narrator’s romantic intrigues include Gilberte, a woman he meets in Paris whose father is married to the beautiful and aristocratic Odette, whom the Narrator idolizes. He and Gilberte have a falling out in book two, In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, and he later meets Albertine after growing obsessed with her from a distance while visiting a beach town for the summer.

In Sodom and Gomorrah, the Narrator relates his secretive observation of two men having engaged in sexual activity and his suspicion that Albertine has lesbian tendencies. Torn between jealousy and irritation, he makes up his mind that he must marry her. Their union is marred by constant arguing and infidelity, and eventually Albertine leaves him. The novel wraps up during World War I, with the Narrator walking through the streets of Paris and contemplating the changes he has witnessed throughout his life.

Key elements: art, Europe, homosexuality, infidelity, lesbian, marriage, mental illness