Proust, Class, and Nation by Edward J. Hughes

Proust, Class, and Nation Reviews

• 
  Stefan Szczelkun

  If you've read De Temps Perdu (all!) this book allows you to compare your insights in the course of your reading with someone who has done a lot more work (probably) reading the literature around Proust and the period. My interest in Proust's work was the social class analysis and his method of approaching a literary truth. This is also the focus of Hughes book so it was particularly rich for me.
  Most of my insights were covered but sometimes with pulled punches which is typical of academic works. I may get around to really comparing all my insights and key moments of class insight (truths?) with his or I might not. The main thing he omits to mention is the section in which the Morels concert is put on at the Verdurins by de Charlus. For me this is perhaps the most important set piece about class and culture in the whole work (if only because it is so prolonged!) Anyway for n ow I'll concentrate on that.
  An extraordinary episode is midway through The Prisoner (pages 220 -300) in which Baron de Charlus, the archetypal male aristocrat, puts on a concert/ party at the Verdurin’s essentially bourgeois Salon. Charlus adopted this salon because of its liberal views on sexuality and for intellectual stimulation. He is set on promoting Morel, the young working class violinist, that he is besotted with, and who he insists is his protege. The music is by Proust’s fictional contemporary composer Vinteuil who has long been adopted by the Verdurin set and first appeared in Swann’s Way. De Charlus insists on inviting only his own aristocratic guest list as he argues that they will be most influential in promoting Morel through their society conversations. But his arrogance gets the better of him and as the guests arrive they are not introduced to the Patronne of the salon - Mme Verdurin. She is ignored and treated as someone in the background, rather than The Patronne of this infamous salon. Baron de Charlus then summons all the charms of his nobility to get the attention of the invited guests and provide a sense of gravitas for the event, and basically takes over the show. It is one of my favourite passages that describes this but it is too long to be quoted here (see p.227/8)
  
  This quietly enrages La Patronne and after the guests have left, without saying goodbye to her or thanking her (a terrible insult in France), she immediately takes her revenge on de Charlus.
  “M de Charlus fell into the same error as on their arrival. He did not ask them to speak to the Patron, to include her and her husband in the thanks they were expressing to him.”p.244
  
  She tells Morel lies that affectively destroys his faith in his sponsor whilst binding him back to a reliance on the Verdurin set. This is made manifest to de Charlus whilst he is still on a high about the apparent runaway success of the evening, and whilst he is completely unaware of his massive faux pas, or misjudgement. Completely blinded by his arrogance, Baron de Charlus becomes dumbstruck! Marcel the narrator wonders why he cannot summon up one of his eloquent and violent rages he is well-known for.
  “The great talker could only stammer - What’s the meaning of this? What’s going on?” p.293
  
  Although the narrator tells this as if it were a psychological drama, and it effectively exists on that level, it is more importantly a story of the protracted cultural class war between the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie in this period. It gives a credible version of how the bourgeoisie came out on top.
  
  There are clues slipped in by the author as to this larger meaning - as de Charlus is in shock at being destroyed by having his boyfriend taken from him and his bourgeois friends unexpectedly turned against him, there is a reference to the Revolutionary Tribunals of the 1790s in which the social order was upturned and the aristocrats who appeared before them could not maintain the illusion of their superiority. p.292
  
  The narrator seems naive in giving only psychological reasons for the breakdown of reactions: for Madame Verdurin - social jealousy, for Baron de Charlus, he is an offended party, socially insulted. To me class war rears is shadowy form above the proceedings but perhaps that would be too much of a claim for Proust to overtly make in the early C20th. Perhaps in any single social instance we cannot effectively prove such a claim as the reasons are so entangled in personalities and their foibles.
  The return of the ‘Queen of Naples’, to get her parasol, and her immediate solidarity with de Charlus is a clever way of showing how embedded he is in his class affiliations. p.296 This is followed by the anecdote of the kindness shown by bourgeois doctor Cottard to the 'whipping boy' (or dotard?) Saniette who has suffered a more classic bourgeois misfortune, the loss of his capital - which, for once, brings him some sympathy. p.299/300
  
  But perhaps the most telling is a little phrase relating to Morel who decides that anyway playing for aristocratic society people’s parties makes one “look like an amateur” p. 289. It would simply be a bad career move for a professional musician. Hanging out with de Charlus is tantamount to professional suicide.
  
  Baron de Charlus has been constructed in earlier volumes as a formidable and intimidating man given to rages and eloquent contemptuous tirades at the drop of a hat. (Proust is hilariously the butt of one in Guermantes Way) Proust becomes quite narratively flakey (or impatient?) at the end of this and explains the lack of response from the heavyweight de Charlus in the days that follow as due to an influenza he comes down with. Maybe it is believable... it is the sort of thing we come down with when under such a social pressure.
  
  In reality aristocracy society, however well connected, was no match for the literary power wielded by the bourgeoisie. Whether this is a realistic set piece about how such cultural power and influence was wrested from the aristocracy I don’t know. But it is very effective as a literary trope in the context of Parisian salon society of the turn of the century and the underlying shifts in class power that were being played out.
  
  Having said all this I think Hughes book is invaluable in substantiating anyones reading of Proust's masterpiece.
  My own analysis of Proust on social class is here:
  
  https://play.google.com/store/books/d...