Proust’s analysis of social class in De Temps Perdu

Book excerpt: With use of many beautiful quotations from Proust's work I will show how de Temps Perdu conveys an invaluable analysis of class oppression in the aristocracy, the bourgeoisie and the working class. This looks at the actual ways that oppression is enacted in social interactions rather than at class exploitation. Marcel Proust is an ethnographer disguised as a novelist. He reports on what he has observed. But it is in the way he forms the narrative with his characteristic eloquence that delivers an incisive class analysis that both teaches us a historical lesson but is also absolutely fresh and relevant to today. This is because he reveals the underlying mechanisms of oppression. A chapbook.