Regarding reactions to the volume of Proust’s Sodom and Gomorrah published in 1921–22, its initial reception was mixed, fascinated, and often morally uneasy. It was read against the background of Proust’s growing fame after Du côté de chez Swann and À l’ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs, so critics were already prepared to treat him as a major novelist—but the treatment of homosexuality, sexual jealousy, and social hypocrisy made this volume especially provocative.
A few features dominated the early reactions:
- Shock at the subject matter. The opening revelation involving Charlus and Jupien was startling to contemporary readers. Proust did not merely allude to homosexuality; he made it structurally central to the novel’s investigation of desire and society.
- Fascination with the psychology of desire.Some readers were impressed by Proust’s ability to portray jealousy, secrecy, self-deception, and erotic obsession. The novel’s sexual material could therefore be regarded as psychologically serious rather than simply scandalous.
- Moral reservations. Other reactions were strongly colored by contemporary sexual morality. Proust’s treatment of homosexuality, particularly his extensive attention to male homosexual society, could be perceived as excessive, disturbing, or indecorous.
- Recognition of Proust’s artistic stature.Even readers troubled by the subject matter increasingly regarded Proust as an extraordinary stylist and psychological observer. The controversy did not simply diminish his reputation; it became part of the fascination surrounding him.
- Attention to the social world. Critics also noticed that Sodom and Gomorrah was not simply a book “about homosexuality.” Proust uses sexuality to expose the mechanisms of the aristocratic and bourgeois social world—secrecy, classification, gossip, hypocrisy, and the instability of social identity.
There is also an important distinction between the first part, published in 1921 as Sodome et Gomorrhe I, and the larger Sodome et Gomorrhe II, published in 1922 after Proust’s death. The initial response therefore unfolded in stages rather than as a single reception event.
Regarding the larger Sodome et Gomorrhe II, published in 1922 after Proust’s death, the reception is particularly interesting: early readers often understood Sodom and Gomorrahas an extraordinarily penetrating study of sexual psychology and hidden desire, but they did not necessarily interpret it through Freud or Jung. That later psychoanalytic framing can make Proust seem more explicitly “Freudian” or “Jungian” than his earliest readers actually considered him.
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