Cities of The Plain

The "cities of the plain" is a literary work written by Marcel Proust between 1921 and 1922. (In the Bible is Sodom and Gomorrah). This volume opens with the same M. Proust that is located at the Baron de Charlus eavesdropping and Jupien, the tailor, and have a homosexual intercourse in Jupien shop. M. Proust was always told that Charlus was a well-known womanizer, but now he sees with his own eyes that the Baron de Charlus has another nature: it is an undeclared homosexual who loves having sex with workers and men of the lower classes. Then M. Proust gives us his explanation about the cause of repressed homosexuality of Baron. Although France at the beginning of the twentieth century was considered more tolerant of homosexuality than other countries, this trend was still considered morally wrong, so much so that the French police had used various public indecency laws in order to harass and imprison those who manifested the homosexuality. Here you can see how Charlus and his acquaintances were part of an underground subculture, in which they lived with the fear of exposure and therefore use languages and secret signs to communicate their proclivities to others. This is a social criticism made by Proust, on closing and the conservatism of a bigot who at the time was considered avant-garde and tolerant than most European countries.