Marcel Proust's Combray "Swann's Way"

Hi, All. I hope everyone has had a great weekend! 

We were assigned to read Combray's "Swann's Way" by Marcel Proust this week. This Novel is exciting in the way it captures a recreation of time past. In this Novel, we see different types of time. We experience narrative time with reason, and we have a sensory experience with seeing and touching, etc. This Novel also ventures into habit and memory; involuntary memory puts us in touch with pure time as we cannot repeat the same experience. The narrator realizes how he has wasted his life and that the only way to regain time is to go over memories and become an artist. This book is about a book being written with habit and disruption of habit.

For example, the habit of falling asleep aware of your surroundings; in the first scene, the narrator waits for his mother to give him a good-night kiss before falling into a deep sleep. The boy starts to envy his father, which I think about when I get into the story. The narrator has a deep attachment to his mother, and he grows jealous of his father as he could want to be the only one deserving of his mother's affection. Another habit is the bourgeois family having the ritual dinner every night while having silly dinner conversations and gossiping. Speaking of a gossiper, the character Aunt Leonie. Aunt Leonie's life is a habit. She drinks her mineral water, has her bread, and watches through the window at the town of Combray. Of course, we can never forget her pet, Francoise, who isn't an animal. However, I describe her as Leonie's little pet, Francoise, who hears all the scandal, returns to Leonie as a puppy and delivers the ball of town gossip. She has silly little conversations with Francoise. Leonie restricts herself to two rooms in the house and focuses only on what surrounds her and what she can see. She will not step outside and engage with the public or go downstairs to the kitchen. Leonie is one of the prominent characters in this book. This Novel also touches on perspective, and Leonie develops a narrow perspective for the narrator, which is essential to the book. Perspective can be defined as an angle between what you see and what you don't see, and Leonie's perspective is bounded by what is going on in the two rooms and the outside world, which is blocked transparently by a window. Windows is a paramount aspect of this Novel. Retracing back to the first scene, the boy has a window in his room that he stares out of, and throughout the house, there are windows surrounding, and the characters throughout the book are found on opposing sides. I think the characters portray voyeurism and the lesbians being watched through the window, and Aunt Leonie is a nosy nelly as she stares at people, but the public might not realize they are being looked at. Concluding all my thoughts, this book got me thinking of habit, perspective, time and windows. 

My Question:What are your thoughts on Aunt Leonie's character? Do you agree with what I have said about her or have an opposing opinion?

Sofia Almerling