On the Beach and in the Boudoir: Albertine as a Classical Amazon Figure in Marcel Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu

Given that Proust’s A la recherche du tempsperdu projects an innovative, avant-garde view of a world in flux, the oddly old-fashioned way in which Albertine, the protagonist’s primary love interest, meets her untimely death in a riding accident invites further reflection. But if this mental picture of Albertine on horseback conjures up the unrestrained figure of the Greek Amazon on the boundaries of civilized society, another image of this Proustian character, dressed in ornate Fortuny robes reminiscent of the Italian Renaissance, depicts an entirely different type of woman, one seemingly subjugated and imprisoned by her relationship with the male protagonist. From Albertine’s first appearance on the beach in Balbec, her ambiguous traits and unconventional behaviors cast her as an outsider, a kind of modern-day Amazon, à cheval between social classes, sexual preferences, and gender characteristics. Once she moves in with the protagonist in Paris, he clothes her in velvet Fortuny robes, effectively taming her free-ranging spirit. Yet under these heavy garments, other more delicate Fortuny Delphos dresses, recalling the supple gowns of Greek Amazons, suggest that Albertine has managed to retain her essential, outsider qualities despite the protagonist’s attempts to domesticate her. This reexamination of Albertine as a twentieth-century Amazon, both on the Balbec beach and in her Paris boudoir, ultimately enriches our understanding of her intriguingly ambiguous identity and reaffirms her quintessential alterity in the Recherche.