Proust's Duchess

by Caroline Weber

Hardcover, 2018

Status

Available

Collection

Publication

New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2018.

Description

"A brilliant look at the glittering, decadent world of turn-of-the-century Paris through the first in-depth study of the three women who inspired the character of the Duchesse de Guermantes, the epitome of high-born glamour, in Marcel Proust's great novel, In Search of Lost Time. Geneviève Halévy Bizet Straus; Laure de Sade, Comtesse Adhéaume de Chevigné; and Elisabeth de Riquet de Caraman-Chimay, Comtesse Greffulhe, were the three superstars of fin-de-siècle Parisian high society who, as Caroline Weber writes, 'transformed themselves, and were transformed by those around them, into living legends: paragons of elegance, nobility, and style.' All of them were stifled in loveless marriages and, between the 1870s and 1890s, sought freedom and fulfillment by reinventing themselves as icons. Weber offers a stunningly intimate look at the illicit passion, secret heartbreak, and fierce, indomitable ambition that lay behind her heroines' exquisite public facades. At their fabled salons, they inspired and championed the creativity of several generations of well-known writers, artists, composers, designers, and journalists who regarded them with boundless fascination and longing. Against a rich and vivid cultural and historical backdrop--the collapse of the Second Empire in 1870, the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, Henri V's court in exile, and the first stirrings of anti-Semitism before the Dreyfus affair--Weber takes the reader into the daily lives of these three seductive women as they attend the ritualized masked balls, formal dinners, nights at the opera and theater, hunts, and royal fêtes. Proust would worship them from afar as a young man in the 1890s and would later meet them, gathering material to create his famous composite character. Drawing extensively on private family archives, Weber has discovered new material as well as two unknown articles by Proust. A beautifully written tour de force of storytelling and scholarship, Proust's Duchess is a sweeping and enthralling narrative, an unforgettable saga of the end of an era: the epic decline and fall of a rarefied aristocratic ideal and the last gasp of the pageantry and privilege of an elite society soon to be lost forever in the trenches of World War I."--Dust jacket.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member japaul22
This dense nonfiction explores the lives of three women who Proust used as a composite to create his famous character, the Duchess of Guermantes, in [In Search of Lost Time]. Having recently read this novel, I knew I had to read this as soon as I saw it had been published.

The three women,
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Geneviève Bizet Straus, Laure de Chevigné, and Élisabeth Greffulhe, (I've shortened their names and titles significantly for convenience!) were staples of the French monde. They were known for their beauty and dominance of society. They were significantly different from each other, and Weber does a wonderful job of bringing them each to life separately. They do have things in common, such as loveless marriages, sometimes even abusive, and a shallowness that likely came with their focus on being popular. These traits were central to Proust's novel.

Geneviève Straus's first husband was the composer Bizet of Carmen fame. When he died young she never forgot him despite remarrying. She was an opium user, had a facial tick, and would often entertain in a comfortable but risque nightgown.

Laure de Chevigné was a descendant of the Marquis de Sade. She had an interesting way of speaking, using made up slang and also pursued typically male pursuits like hunting and putting herself in male circles.

Élisabeth Greffulhe was probably the most stereotypical example of a mondain superstar. She consistently made a splash at every ball with her eccentric and beautiful costumes. She gathered men to her, always having many men declaring love for her while she kept them at a distance. It seems she rarely if ever consummated any of these relationships, simply wanting the attention and adoration. She was a beauty, often compared to a swan and painted by many famous artists of the time.

Proust met these three in the order I've described them, at first being obsessed with meeting them and then becoming disillusioned with how boring he found their salons. Weber has written a book that strikes a great balance of describing these women and their lives with source material and also connecting them to Proust's famous novel as characters. She gets the balance between analyzing the book and separating these women from it just right.

I think this will mainly appeal to readers of [In Search of Lost Time], but those who have an interest in the lives of high society women in early 1900 France might also be interested. I loved it.

Original publication date: 2018
Author’s nationality: American
Original language: English
Length: 715 pages
Rating: 4 stars
Format/Where I acquired the book: library hardback
Why I read this: nonfiction relating to Proust
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Awards

Pulitzer Prize (Finalist — Biography — 2019)

Language

Barcode

7268
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