{"id":23,"date":"2026-01-08T19:48:30","date_gmt":"2026-01-09T02:48:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mshiu\/?p=23"},"modified":"2026-01-08T19:48:30","modified_gmt":"2026-01-09T02:48:30","slug":"proust","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mshiu\/2026\/01\/08\/proust\/","title":{"rendered":"proust"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hi everyone,<\/span><\/p>\n

My immediate reaction post-Proust reading is that I’m confused but I think I understand the gist of it. Throughout the text, I found myself lost at many points and when I thought I was getting into a flow, I would realize I was completely misinterpreting or missing details. So I ended up circling back and re-reading sections quite a bit… I thought some of the wording and description was a bit lengthy and muddled, but a lot of this is probably due to my inexperience with this genre of literature. As I mentioned in my intro post, I’m more used to the straight-to-the-point and more grounded scientific or historical articles (which can also be wordy but in a less artistic way?) I’ve studied in previous classes.<\/span><\/p>\n

Anyways, despite all this, I think I enjoyed the reading. I was really interested in the beginning where the narrator was describing his experience at Combray as a child wanting his mother’s affection and his father’s disapproval. The description of how important the ritual of just his mother’s goodnight kiss was and the lengths he was going to get this when M. Swann’s visit denied it is embedded in my mind. It reminded me of something that’s been mentioned in many of my classes and even at work: the significance of parental affection for childhood development and how such a small gesture can have such a profound impact on a child. The scene of him sobbing with his mother when she stays with him for the night instead of punishing him for staying up just for a kiss really struck me. When she begins to read to him, the text just laments on how beautiful and gentle her voice is, as well as how much care she takes in speaking… Wow! I found it sooo sweet. I think maybe I am just emotional or really appreciate\u00a0 themes about mothers and their children…<\/span><\/p>\n

Moving on, I also found the way Proust connects memory, place, and emotion quite compelling, even if it was confusing to follow sometimes. I can really relate to the idea that certain rooms, smells, or foods (like the narrator’s madeleine cookie and tea) and can carry such emotional weight and bring us back to specific moments. It made me think about how a lot of our lives are shaped by seemingly unimportant details and associations.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In all, although I was, at times, a bit lost in the language, I found what I could understand visually stunning and absorbing. Hopefully reading the literature will get easier with more practice throughout the semester, but I’m so far enjoying it either way!<\/p>\n

My question is how do you think the narrator’s lack of parental affection affected him and his emotions (especially around love\/attachment) later in life? Also, how could this connect to research in real-world studies on childhood development?<\/span><\/p>\n

Thank you for reading!<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hi everyone, My immediate reaction post-Proust reading is that I’m confused but I think I understand the gist of it. Throughout the text, I found myself lost at many points and when I thought I was getting into a flow, I would realize I was completely misinterpreting or missing details. So I ended up circling … Continue reading proust<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107387,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[5,3,4],"class_list":["post-23","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-childhood","tag-family","tag-memory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mshiu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mshiu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mshiu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mshiu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107387"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mshiu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mshiu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mshiu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23\/revisions\/24"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mshiu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mshiu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mshiu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}