Sorbonne

The Sorbonne is the academic institution in which Brichot lectures and examines students, but its importance in the narrative lies chiefly in the contrast between his professional standing there and the social prestige he acquires among the Verdurins. His weakening eyesight and reduced work reshape his academic life, while his association with the salon gives him a distinction his university colleagues admire from a distance.

Brichot’s Academic Work

Brichot’s duties at the Sorbonne eventually narrow to lecturing and examining. His sight has grown steadily weaker, and in Paris he has had to cut back his work after dark. The change is practical as well as physical: with fewer academic demands, he has more time for evenings at the Verdurins’ and for gatherings hosted by members of their circle.

The Sorbonne is also a site of intellectual change from which Brichot feels increasingly estranged. He is out of sympathy with its modern direction, where scientific exactitude, following the German model, is beginning to prevail over humanism. The passage presents this shift through Brichot’s perspective rather than offering a broader account of the university: it marks the intellectual climate against which his own social and scholarly identity is defined.

The University and the Verdurin Circle

Brichot’s ties to the Verdurins grow stronger as his university work diminishes. On the journey to join the group, other members look out for him because of his impaired sight; once his straw hat, green umbrella, and blue spectacles are spotted, he is guided toward their carriage. The practical care he receives on the way mirrors his growing dependence on their social company.

His attachment to the circle is reinforced by Madame Verdurin’s intervention in his private life. When Brichot’s laundress becomes a possible source of romantic attachment, Madame Verdurin visits his fifth-floor rooms and throws the woman out, presenting the episode as a defense of him from an unsuitable entanglement. Brichot never forgets what he regards as a service that saved his old age from foundering, and becomes still more devoted to Madame Verdurin. The protection, however, is also an exercise of control: she determines who may enter his life, while his gratitude makes him more firmly her follower.

Social Prestige and Academic Standing

Through intimacy with the Verdurins, Brichot gains a glamour that distinguishes him from his Sorbonne colleagues. They are impressed by his accounts of dinner parties to which they would never be invited, by his appearance in reviews, and by a portrait displayed at the Salon by a writer or painter of repute. His fashionable clothes also become a subject of instruction: colleagues who first mistake his elegance for slovenliness learn from him that a top hat may be set aside during a call, while a trilby suits a smart dinner in the country when worn with a dinner jacket.

This reversal gives the Sorbonne a pointed role in the portrait of social status. Brichot’s colleagues possess proximity to the university’s academic world, but they envy his access to salons and cultural notice; his standing among them is enhanced by the very social connections that have displaced much of his former work. At the same time, Madame Verdurin is beginning to tire of a follower whose obedience is assured. Brichot’s academic prestige and his salon glamour therefore do not simply accumulate together: the narrative shows the latter growing as the former contracts, with his loyalty binding him to a circle whose attention may itself be changeable.