Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-84b7d79bbc-dwq4g Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-27T22:23:57.606Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

9 - Ladders of Love

An Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

Martha C. Nussbaum
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
Get access

Summary

LOVE AT BALBEC

The band of girls approaches on the beach, their features indistinct. As they grow closer, Marcel's gaze fastens on “a girl with brilliant, laughing eyes and plump, matt cheeks, a black polo-cap crammed on her head, who was pushing a bicycle with … an uninhibited swing of the hips” (1.850). Their insolence and daring dazzle him. For a brief moment he sees the dark girl's eyes beneath her cap, sees a “smiling, sidelong glance, aimed from … an inaccessible, unknown world wherein the idea of what I was could certainly never penetrate” (1.851). It is at this moment that love begins, inspired by the sign of a hidden life:

If we thought that the eyes of such a girl were merely two glittering sequins of mica, we should not be athirst to know her and to unite her life to ours. But we sense that what shines in those reflecting discs is not due solely to their material composition; that it is, unknown to us, the dark shadows of ideas that that person cherishes about the people and places she knows – the turf of race-courses, the sand of cycling tracks over which, pedalling on past fields and woods, she would have drawn me after her, … the shadows, too, of the home to which she will presently return, of the plans that she is forming or that others have formed for her; and above all that it is she, with her desires, her sympathies, her revulsions, her obscure and incessant will. […]

Type
Chapter
Information
Upheavals of Thought
The Intelligence of Emotions
, pp. 457 - 481
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2001

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • Ladders of Love
  • Martha C. Nussbaum, University of Chicago
  • Book: Upheavals of Thought
  • Online publication: 05 June 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511840715.011
Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • Ladders of Love
  • Martha C. Nussbaum, University of Chicago
  • Book: Upheavals of Thought
  • Online publication: 05 June 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511840715.011
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Ladders of Love
  • Martha C. Nussbaum, University of Chicago
  • Book: Upheavals of Thought
  • Online publication: 05 June 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511840715.011
Available formats
×