“Je suis très amoureux de blanchisseuses” From Sainte-Beuve to Sodome et Gomorrhe IV; From erotic trivialization to the return of the tragic

From the jumping-off point of a letter written by Proust to Lucien Daudet at the end of 1908, which signals a budding fascination for the theme of laundresses, this investigation seeks to evaluate the extent to which this theme with strong erotic potential could have contributed to the birth of the novel, despite the fact that, paradoxically, it appears almost absent in it, except in the late and tragic developments of Albertine’s lesbian romances. A question of hell that, since Jean Santeuil, has pursued the aquatic imaginary.