Madame Proust, a Biography by Evelyne Bloch-Dano (review)

1 78Women in French Studies patronage towards contemporary authors, her inclusion of original subjects such as women's erotica in her own verse, and her creativity and scholarship in contrast to society's view ofwomen as intellectually limited, l'Aubespine stands out as a significant French literary figure of the XVIth century and beyond. As for Koslowska, she has broken fresh literary ground by making l'Aubespine's poems accessible to an Anglophone audience for the first time. Jane E. EvansUniversity of Texas at El Paso Bloch-Dano, Evelyne. Madame Proust, a Biography. Trans. Alice Kaplan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. Pp xi-xiii; 310. ISBN 0-22605642 -5. $27.50. Evelyne Bloch Daño has combined her university background in French letters with her interest in women's lives, maternity, and the roles of mothers in their children's development. As a biographer, journalist and literary critic, she has written about women, from Colette to Madame Zola, from George Sand to Flora Tristan. It is hardly surprising that she would write a biography of one of literature's most famous women, Proust's mother. Her influence on her son Marcel has often been examined, but perhaps from afar and not always in connection with her époque. Evelyne Bloch Dano's Madame Proust, captures the essence of Proust's mother within her generation, her family and her life story. The author uses the larger cultural macrocosm to explore the complex relational microcosm that existed between mother and son. This book appeared in France in 2004 with great success, winning numerous prizes, and has recently been translated into English by Alice Kaplan. Madame Proust stands as a fascinating portrait of Marcel's Proust mother, Jeanne Weil Proust (1849-1905) by examining the determining influence she had on her son emotionally and their interconnections in literature and the arts. Jeanne's total devotion to her first-born, Marcel, did not prevent her from wanting him to detach from her. She was aware of his potential gifts and gave him a certain discipline in research, translating and writing, at once discreet and overbearing, but never blind to his sexual tendencies. Their interdependency often annoyed Marcel's father, Adrien Proust (1834-1903), critical of what he considered their overindulging affection. As a wife and head of household, Jeanne appeared fairly happy and greatly competent in her various functions. She showed intelligence, sensitivity and independence of thought within the confines of her nineteenth century role. The biography captures in great detail the French atmosphere oífin de siècle France, the vibrant Paris of the time with the travels of the fashionable class from country estates to sea-resorts and spas during the proper seasons. It depicts the Parisian bourgeoisie and the assimilation of high bourgeois Jewish families represented by the banking family of the Weils, Jeanne Proust's ancestors. Jeanne's integration within the French society was hastened also by her Book Reviews179 marriage to her soon-to-be prominent Catholic doctor husband, though he still remained attached to his provincial milieu (a fact that created an uneasiness between Jeanne and his religious, lower-class mother). The intellectual, sensitive, inner-looking Jeanne with her extrovert, optimistic, scientifically trained husband formed a very complementary, ambitious and successful couple in spite of their outward differences. Typical of many in the Third Republic, they combined political liberalism (they supported Dreyfus, for example) with an optimistic belief in the success of human endeavors. Religiously, their mostly agnostic views of the world joined them and softened their differences within the Jewish and Catholic traditions, rites they outwardly followed. AU readers, Proust neophytes, students and specialists alike will appreciate this biography that reads like a novel. It is definitely a necessary companion, for pleasure or for research, to any part of A la recherche du temps perdu. It sheds light on the "leading mama's boy of the canon" according to Bloch-Dano's own words in her preface. It explains famous passages such as the protagonist's feelings waiting for his mother's kiss in Combray, those of the Venice trip, of the Cabourg and Trouville vacations and of other Proustian descriptions. The reader's voyage into the...