Dramatis Personae
Reminder: have you read the Introduction?
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Search_of_Lost_Time, to which I have made alterations, additions and interpolations of my own. The site also contains a graphic of the interconnections between the main players: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Search_of_Lost_Time#/media/File:Proust_Main_Characters.svg The photos from the same principal site are respectively: Mme Georges Bizet, partial inspiration for the character of Odette; Élisabeth, Countess Greffulhe 1905, the model for the character of the Duchesse de Guermantes; and Robert de Montesquiou, the main inspiration for Baron de Charlus.
The Narrator's household:
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Search_of_Lost_Time, to which I have made alterations, additions and interpolations of my own. The site also contains a graphic of the interconnections between the main players: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Search_of_Lost_Time#/media/File:Proust_Main_Characters.svg The photos from the same principal site are respectively: Mme Georges Bizet, partial inspiration for the character of Odette; Élisabeth, Countess Greffulhe 1905, the model for the character of the Duchesse de Guermantes; and Robert de Montesquiou, the main inspiration for Baron de Charlus.
The Narrator's household:
- The Narrator, his mother and father (a diplomat); his grandmother.
- Françoise: The narrator’s faithful maid.
- Palamède, Baron de Charlus: An aristocratic, decadent aesthete with many antisocial habits; nephew of Mme de Villeparisis, an old friend of the narrator’s grandmother; brother of the Comptesse de Marsantes (VI, 216); brother of the Duc de Guermantes; (VI, 96: Guermantes Way, Pt 2), (VIII, 137); brother-in-law of Mme de Guermantes and the cousin with whom she had grown up (VI, 96). The model is Robert de Montesquiou. At IX, 182, the narrator dreams that de Charlus had “just boxed the ears off his own mother, Madame Verdurin”, but the account is replete with many other fantasies.
- Oriane, Duchesse de Guermantes: The toast of Parisian high society; lives in the fashionable Faubourg St. Germain. Models are Comtesse Greffulhe and Comtesse de Chevigné; at the close of the story, "previously unwilling to acknowledge any but the most fashionable members of her world, she now (after the War) cultivates the friendship of the actress Rachel, previously the mistress of her nephew Saint-Loup, and originally a whore"*.
- Robert de Saint-Loup; an army officer and the narrator's best friend; nephew of Charlus (VIII, 9). Despite his patrician birth (he is the nephew of M. de Guermantes) and affluent lifestyle, Saint-Loup has no great fortune of his own until he marries Gilberte. Models are Gaston de Cavaillet and Clement de Maugny.
- Marquise de Villeparisis: The aunt of the Baron de Charlus, and the Duc de Guermantes; an old friend of the narrator's grandmother. (VI, 317).
- Duc de Guermantes: Oriane's husband and Charlus' brother; at the close of the book is in love with Swann’s widow, the former courtesan Odette de Crecy (q.v.);
- Prince de Guermantes: The cousin of the Duc and Duchess. Ruined by the German defeat, married Mme Verdurin after his wife's death*, see below under Verdurin..
- Princesse de Guermantes (Marie-Gilbert); cousin of the Duchess de Guermantes (Oriane) (VII 83); wife of the Prince; died during the War.
- Mme de Luxembourg, daughter of the Prince de Parme (VI, 162).
- Charles Swann: A Jewish friend of the narrator's family. His political views on the Dreyfus Affair and his marriage to Odette, described in the text as “a whore”, ostracize him from much of high society.
- Odette de Crécy: A beautiful Parisian courtesan. Odette is also referred to as Mme Swann, the lady in pink, and in the final volume, Mme de Forcheville.
- Gilberte Swann: The daughter of Swann and Odette. She takes the name of her adopted father, M. de Forcheville, after Swann's death, and then becomes Mme de Saint-Loup following her marriage to Robert de Saint-Loup, in the process joining Swann's Way and the Guermantes Way. At the close of the book, she now has a daughter of her own whom Time has fashioned into a "masterpiece".
- Elstir: A famous painter whose renditions of sea and sky echo the novel's theme of the mutability of human life. Modeled on Claude Monet.
- Bergotte: A well-known writer whose works the narrator has admired since childhood. The models are Anatole France and Paul Bourget
- Vinteuil: An obscure musician who gains posthumous recognition for composing a beautiful, evocative sonata, known as the Vinteuil Sonata.
- Berma: A famous actress who specializes in roles by Jean Racine.
- Madame Verdurin (Sidonie Verdurin): ‘Mistress’ of ‘the little clan,’ a bohemian artistic circle; a poseur and a salonnière who rises to the top of society through inheritance, marriage, and sheer single-mindedness. Shortly after her husband's death, married the old ruined Duc de Duras, who thus made her the Prince de Guermantes' cousin and died after they had been married two years; then married the Prince de Guermantes. (XII, 319-20, Philippe Julian trans, 1960 edition)*.
- M. Verdurin: husband of Mme Verdurin. See above under MMe Verdurin.
- Cottard: A doctor who is very good at his work.
- Brichot: A pompous academic.
- Albertine Simonet: A privileged orphan of average beauty and intelligence. The narrator's romance with her is the subject of much of the novel.
- Andrée: Albertine's friend, whom the Narrator also feels attracted to from time to time.
- Gisèle and Rosemonde: Other members of the little band.
- Charles Morel: The son of the narrator's uncle's valet (VIII, 11) and a gifted violinist. He profits greatly from the patronage of the Baron de Charlus and later Robert de Saint-Loup.
- Rachel: A prostitute and actress who is the mistress of Robert de Saint-Loup.
- Marquis de Norpois: A diplomat and friend of the Narrator's father, involved with Mme de Villeparisis.
- Albert Bloch: A pretentious Jewish friend of the Narrator, later a successful playwright, much in demand in society circles.
- Jupien: A tailor who has a shop in the courtyard of the Guermantes hotel. He lives with his niece. He has a homosexual relationship with de Charlus and runs a male brothel in Paris during the war years. He becomes the Baron’s carer during the latters’s declining years.
- Madame Bontemps: Albertine's aunt and guardian.
- Legrandin: A snobbish friend of the Narrator's family. Engineer and man of letters.
- Marquis and Marquise de Cambremer: Provincial gentry who live near Balbec. Mme de Cambremer is Legrandin's sister.
- Mlle Vinteuil: Daughter of the composer Vinteuil. She has a friend who introduces her to lesbianism.
Note*: When the Narrator emerges from his stint in a Sanitarium at the end of the war and re-enters society, he finds that the two Ways of his childhood walks in Combray have now come together; the Méséglise (or Swann’s Way), representing the bourgeois society into which Marcel was born, and the Guermantes Way. The aristocratic circle of the Guermantes family into which he has been admitted, are now united, and members of both worlds are to be found mingling in Paris society.
* Source: http://www.naxos.com/mainsite/blurbs_reviews.asp?item_code=NA322012&catNum=NA322012&filetype=About%20this%20Recording&language=English
* Source: http://www.naxos.com/mainsite/blurbs_reviews.asp?item_code=NA322012&catNum=NA322012&filetype=About%20this%20Recording&language=English