Narrator’s jealousy and dependence on Albertine

The narrator’s jealousy and dependence on Albertine govern the shifting ease and anxiety of their intimacy. Her company can soothe him so thoroughly that he feels happy to part from her; yet the possibility of plans, meetings, or desires beyond his knowledge makes that calm precarious. He tries to manage the uncertainty by keeping close to her and avoiding situations that might awaken suspicion, but the need for reassurance itself becomes a form of dependence.

Intimacy and the Unlived Love

On their drives, physical closeness can resemble the ordinary happiness of lovers: seated side by side, Albertine leaning against him, the two sharing the car and the evening. The narrator admits that he may be in love, but he does not dare reveal it to her. His love therefore remains an abstract truth, untested by experience and seemingly outside the plane of life. Jealousy, by contrast, already dictates conduct. It urges him to leave Albertine as little as possible, even as he recognizes that it would be cured completely only by parting from her forever.

The outings soothe not because they establish trust, but because they take Albertine away from places he has not shared with her, such as her aunt’s or her girlfriends’ company. Their pleasure is less a positive joy than relief from anxiety: a memory of walking together at Saint-Mars-le-Vêtu, or of stopping by a farm for cider, can transform the indifferent image of a modern church into a soothing presence. He can drop her at Parville and feel that their hours together still fill his days; even parting from her need not immediately make him feel alone. The respite depends on the conviction that he remains central to her life.

Suspicion beneath Reassurance

A lunch at Rivebelle exposes how quickly that reassurance can fail. When Albertine looks intently at a waiter, the narrator imagines a private understanding between them, perhaps continuing meetings he knows nothing about, perhaps arising only from a glance. He feels like an unwelcome third party in a secret conversation and wonders whether she might leave the table to follow the waiter. He responds not by discovering what has happened, but by deciding not to return to Rivebelle and securing Albertine’s promise that she will not go there again. He also denies that the waiter had looked only at her, so that she will not think his company has deprived her of a pleasure. The episode shows jealousy working simultaneously as fear and as an attempt to conceal the restrictions it imposes.

The narrator can sometimes go without seeing Albertine every day and still feel content, because the calming effect of their time together lasts. But overhearing her arrange to meet others at half past eight destroys that calm. Her words seem to conceal a hidden current beneath ordinary conversation. He wants to ask her to see him the next morning, thereby preventing the unexplained appointment; at the same time, he recognizes that repeated interference would make him the person from whom she hides things. He even considers that the gatherings may be unimportant, or that she excludes him because their participants might bore him. Suspicion persists despite his ability to imagine innocent explanations.

Relief as a Repeating Cycle

The same dependence governs his anticipation of each meeting. After nights spent together by the sea, he reads Albertine’s telegram or postcard and takes their shared intimacy as evidence that they must love one another. Yet the next morning he delays asking to go out with her because he fears she will be unavailable. Her face becomes an enigma: her unknown decision seems capable of determining the happiness or misery of his afternoon. When she agrees to go out, anxiety gives way to an intense relief, and he repeats to himself how sweet and adorable she is. The emotional reward comes not simply from her presence, but from the release that follows uncertainty.

That release remains conditional. On days Albertine cannot go out with him, the narrator tells people he will remain at Balbec; he allows Saint-Loup to visit only on those days. When Saint-Loup once arrives unexpectedly, the narrator chooses to forgo seeing him rather than risk his meeting Albertine and reviving the narrator’s jealousy. Afterward, Saint-Loup follows the rule of coming only when summoned. A relationship once desired for its own pleasures is thus reorganized around the narrator’s need to protect the fragile calm he associates with Albertine.

Distance and the Persistence of Jealousy

The narrator’s attachment does not remain constant. At a later point, he says that he scarcely loves Albertine and no longer thinks about what she does on days when he does not see her. Yet when she is physically nearby, even a partition separating her from him becomes intolerable: it might conceal a betrayal. If she joins the women in the next railway compartment, he leaves a conversation with Brichot, Cottard, or Charlus and goes to check on her, unable to explain his departure. The contrast matters: jealousy can recede across distance and return with force in the immediate presence of the person who arouses it.

His dependence is therefore neither simple possession nor settled affection. Albertine’s company relieves anxiety, but the relief is vulnerable to her independent plans, a waiter’s glance, a concealed appointment, or a wall between compartments. Each reassurance can sustain him for a time; each renewed uncertainty turns closeness into surveillance. The pattern makes the relationship’s apparent intimacy inseparable from the narrator’s effort to control what he cannot know.