Marcel Proust: Combray

I found the protagonist's relationship with his mother to be a bit puzzling. Though, I do understand a child’s need for a mother’s love and the devoted relationship between parents and children. However, the protagonist’s need for his mother’s kiss goodnight to sleep or even feel content was a bit unusual to me. The protagonist is aware that staying up to see his mother will only anger her and cause adverse consequences for him, he even states that “when she saw that I had stayed up to say goodnight … they would not allow me to live at home” (34). Yet he is still willing to risk the stability and comfort of living at Combray just for a moment of intimacy with his mother that he would be able to experience the very next night.  It seems to me that the central character has a multitude of other meaningful familial relationships, but he so deeply desires the affection of his mother that he is almost unable to function without it and his nervous disposition becomes greatly disturbed. I understand that my perspective may be biased by my psychology background, however, I find his attachment to his mother to be very unhealthy. On the other hand, after watching the lecture I think there is a possibility that this was a modernist decision of the author, to have reader reconsider their expectations for a mother and son relationship.

Additionally, I was interested in the character of Marcel’s great aunt she seems to be a very ego-driven character. This is demonstrated multiple times within the text particularly when M.Swann is mentioned in the Figaro, the great-aunt attempts to gain “solidarity with her own [point]” (22), by condemning the convictions of the grandmother because they “were never of the same opinion” (22). Furthermore, on the next page, the text states that “whenever she saw others advantage, however small, that she did not have, she persuaded herself that it was not an advantage but a detriment and she pitied them so as not to envy them” (23). I feel these excerpts provide a wonderful caricature of what we would expect of an upper-class lady in this period she is somewhat narcissistic and seems to be the complete opposite of the mother’s caring and quiet personality. Yet despite this the protagonist and her seem to have a rather amiable relationship; The only time Marcel shows dissatisfaction with her is when she mocks his grandmother. Overall, what I find most interesting about the great-aunt is her place within their family dynamic and how she serves to counter both the mother's and the grandmother’s kind dispositions.