A Room of Proust's Own, Another Perspective

Natalie writes: “If Proust is anything like his alter ego Marcel, and I suspect that he is, he most definitely valued the privacy and solitude offered to him by his bedroom.”

Indeed, I think it is fair to say that Marcel did enjoy the privacy and solitude afforded to him by his bedroom; however, there is much more to be said about the bedroom and Marcel’s writings, identity, and privacy. The bedroom affords Marcel the ultimate locus to explore desire and still enjoy the comfort of the closet. I want to provide here a much closer reading of the bedroom than perhaps previously considered and I should forewarn here that parts of this are coming from dissertation writing (I should, perhaps, provide its title: “The Sexual Scripture: A Study of Virginity in Romance”), so apologies in advance if an argument seems undeveloped here or unexplained (it likely was dealt with earlier in the dissertation).

In the final volume of Proust’s novel, Gilberte explains her own sexual awakenings and recognition of her sexual identity,

“The first time at Tansonville. You were going for a walk with your family, and I was on my way home. I’d never seen such a pretty little boy. I was in the habit,” she went on with a vaguely bashful air, “of going to play with little boys I knew in the ruins of the keep of Roussainville. And you will tell me that I was a very naughty girl, for there were girls and boys there of all sorts who took advantage of the darkness. The altar-boy from Combray church, Théodore, who, I must admit was very nice indeed (goodness, how handsome he was!) and who has become quite ugly (he’s the chemist now at Méséglise), used to amuse himself with all the peasant girls of the district. As I was allowed to go out by myself, whenever I was able to get away, I used to rush over there. I can’t tell you how I longed for you to come there too; I remember quite well that, as I had only a moment in which to make you understand what I wanted, at the risk of being seen by your people and mine, I signalled to you so vulgarly that I’m ashamed of it to this day. But you stared at me so crossly that I saw that you didn’t want to.” (VI: 4-5)

This quotation recognises the very discourse of virginity that runs alongside the epistemology of the closet because it is a revealing of oneself to another and moreover that this “coming out,” is very much a “sexual” coming out. In the case of Gilberte the references to her virginity or virginal nature are manifested in the language of “the first time” which is aligned with virginity and later her discussion of having gained sexual knowledge at Roussainville. These indications are coupled with a past tense that recalls a “lost time,” a “virginal time.” It is interesting to note here that,

The tower of Roussainville is indeed phallic, not only because the protagonist gazes at it from the window while masturbating and yearning for a girl but also because years later he learns that the two had been the scene of sexual experimentations by young people of the village and that what he had mistaken for Gilberte’s obscene gesture of repulsion on first seeing him had in fact been intended as an invitation to join her in the games at the tower. (Carter 5-6)

This site then becomes, in many regards, the door out of the virginal closet; had Marcel realised what Gilberte desired, he would have been able to lose his virginity instead of being a chronic masturbator and a perpetually anxious virgin.

Proust’s room, Marcel’s room is the locus of pleasure for the chronic masturbator. There is a lot of masturbation in In Search of Lost Time – lost time indeed! – and our earliest masturbatory instance occurs in the very opening pages of Swann’s Way: “it was the only room whose door I was allowed to lock, whenever my occupation was such as required an inviolable solitude: reading or day-dreaming, tears of sensual pleasure” (I:14). Incidentally, if we return to the opening line of Swann’s Way: “For a long time I would go to bed early” – the question in the reader’s mind becomes: why is he going to bed early, to read or to “day-dream”? It is interesting to note, however, that it is only within the framework of In Search of Lost Time that his bedroom offers “inviolable solitude,” for in real life, we are told in a letter by Proust: “This morning, dearest, when my father saw me . . . he begged me to stop masturbating for at least four days” (Carter 4). In his book, Proust in Love, William C. Carter provides a brief overview and discussion of masturbation and Proust; however, I want to take this a bit further in relation to our discussions of indulgence, writing, and reading.

We have acknowledged that writing can be a labour; however, what if we read this less in terms of labour and more in terms of pleasure. Proust alludes to this possibility when he speaks of the bedroom affording a place to read and to “day-dream,” but what if we also, in this bedroom, position writing alongside reading and “day-dreaming”? What if these three notions all fold into one another? Is Proust’s masterpiece really the longest of masturbatory exploration of the various desires that the narrator considers in the privacy of his writing and reading space?

J.A.