Remembrance of Things Past 893but it also provides the text with its structure: The
narrator jumps forward and backward through time,
often presenting memories within memories, while
also recounting other people’s memories, as in the
second part of the novel, Swann in Love.
For the narrator, the importance of remembrance
stems from its relationship to the passage of time.
Even when he is not actively remembering, he is
overly conscious of the fleeting nature of the present.
For this reason, when he describes his angst about
his mother’s goodnight kiss, he evokes both the
intense anticipation of the hoped-for event and the
regret that he cannot delay this pleasurable experi-
ence. As soon as the kiss takes place, it no longer
exists: The moment is gone and becomes a part of
the past, an “old, dead moment.” This acute sense of
the passage of time is related to a deeper existential
issue. According to the narrator, because time is
“fugitive,” always ticking, “reality will take shape in
the memory alone.” The “life of the mind” is, there-
fore, richer than day-to-day reality because every-
thing is susceptible to change except our memories.
For this reason, as is shown in the final section of
Swann’s Way, “Place Names: The Name,” words have
the power to evoke the past and often contain more
meaning than the things they describe. Thus, when
the narrator is older and alone, writing his novel, his
recollections and the act of remembering give his
life meaning, even though they cannot erase all pain,
even though “remembrance of a certain form is but
regret for a particular moment.”
Katherine Ashley
SocIaL cLaSS in Remembrance of Things Past
In its portrayal of the changing nature of the
“sharply defined castes” of early 20th-century
France, Remembrance of Things Past is not so much
a criticism of the class system as a critique of snob-
bery and misplaced social ambitions. Characters act
differently depending on whether they are in high,
bourgeois, or bohemian society, and they must regu-
late their relationships for fear of flouting conven-
tional “laws of middle-class morality” and fueling
social jealousy. But at the same time as it exposes
the pettiness and hypocrisy of bourgeois society,
Remembrance of Things Past hints at the demise of
the rigid social structures of 19th-century France.
Moving in social circles outside of one’s class is
frowned upon. While independent spirits such as
the narrator’s grandmother think that “distinction
[is] a thing wholly independent of social position,”
others, such as his great-aunt, subscribe to “provin-
cial dogmatism,” whereby to “associat[e] outside the
caste in which [one] had been born and bred” is
tantamount to “utter degradation.” The difference in
attitude rests on the extent to which characters have
social ambitions of their own and are concerned
by how others perceive them. Thus, although the
Verdurins, for example, are ridiculed by the nar-
rator, people of all social classes—from Françoise
the servant to Mme. de Franquetot—are concerned
with keeping up appearances. Even the composer,
Vinteuil, displays a “strong . . . element of hypoc-
risy”: His daughter disgraces him socially, but he still
deplores Charles Swann’s inappropriate marriage.
The caste system is particularly rigid for the
middle classes, who must climb neither up nor down
the social ladder. The narrator’s grandfather likens
the Verdurins to the “riffraff of Bohemia,” the Ver-
durins refer to those above them as “bores,” and the
narrator’s uncle is ostracized by his family because
of his acquaintances. Most significantly, however,
Charles Swann leads a double life by concealing the
fact that he “had entirely ceased to live in the kind
of society which his family had frequented.” Swann
has committed two sins against society: He cannot
mention Odette and the Verdurins (who are beneath
him), but neither can he admit that he moves in
high society (which is above him). Thus, while he
implicitly understands the social taboo he violates
in marrying Odette—“he never attempt[s] to intro-
duce” his wife to the narrator’s family—he also hides
the fact that he is “sought after in the aristocratic
world of the Faubourg Saint-Germain.”
“Worldly ambition” is something the narrator’s
grandmother is “little capable of feeling, or indeed
of understanding,” but others are clearly social
climbers. Legrandin, for instance, worries that the
rich might know “that he numbered . . . among his
friends middle-class people.” This snobbery leads
to social snubs: Legrandin invites the young narra-
tor to dinner, only to ignore his family in the street
the following day—“in a word, he was a snob.”
Similarly, the Verdurins aspire to exclusivity. Their