Desire on Ice: The Menace of Albertine's Mimicry in La Prisonniere

Albertine's discourse on the ices in La Prisonniere has proven fertile ground for Proustian criticism. Some critics have interpreted this passage as "homosexual discourse in the guise of a lesbian discourse" (qtd. in Gray, 111). Others have cited its architectural tropes as a prophetic allusion to the narrator's imminent masterpiece. A few have interpreted the passage as a "fantasy of fellatio" amply supported by the proliferation of phallic images. Finally, a body of criticism has interpreted this passage as evidence of a self-parodying, authorial mastery. Reading against the rain of this tradition, Margaret Gray develops a provocative reading that asserts the precise opposite: that Albertine's discourse on the "ices" evidences the loss of authorial mastery to the emergence of a "feminine ecriture." In this paper, I develop the subversive elements of Albertine's discourse on the "ices" while contesting Gray's assertion: if Albertine's discourse evidences the loss of Marcel's mastery over her, it leads to the recuperation of his authorial mastery by virtue of the suffering it inflicts on him.