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Proust in the Tearoom

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Jarrod Hayes
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Abstract

In French, the words tasse ‘teacup’ and théière ‘teapot’ also denote a public rest room where men have sex—a “tearoom” in English—and prendre le thé ‘to have tea’ means “to have homosexual sex.” Most of the narrative of Marcel Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu is said to result from having tea with a madeleine. This essay examines the possibility that the passage in which Charlus engages in tearoom sex may imply that there are other such tea parties in the novel. More broadly, I consider the importance of coded or secret languages in the production of sexual knowledge. Revealing the tearoom's secret opens up a Trojan horse (to use Monique Wittig's term) of interpretive uncertainties in the novel, as well as a contagion of doubt concerning heterosexual masculinity and male subjectivity.

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Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 110 , Issue 5 , October 1995 , pp. 992 - 1005
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1995

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