Représentations vestimentaires féminines dans La Recherche de Marcel Proust
Feminine sartorial representations in La Recherche by Marcel Proust

Summary/Abstract: The article aims to analyse two female characters from Marcel Proust’s novel À la Recherche du Temps Perdu, starting from the distinction between le costume (the suit) and l’habillement (the clothing) which Roland Barthes makes in one of his papers. According to Barthes, the concept of vêtement (garment) contains both. Odette de Crécy, married to the bourgeois Charles Swann, retains marks of her former status of courtesan in her way of dressing, but at the same time, she gives expression to an entire age, her age, la belle époque. The Duchess Oriane de Guermantes dresses in accordance with her unique personality, but because she is idealized, she is also transfigured by the gaze of the narrator who transforms her into a myth, a saint and places her in a supernatural world. In Proust’s works, women’s clothing represents the social class and an expression of women’s inwardness, as well as object of the narrator’s fantasy.

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