Tante Leonie’s the domestic ‘lioness’ looking out from her room ‘tower’ over the village square of Combray and observing the comings and goings.
To my mind, she’s the beast. Akin to the Lion of St. Mark overlooking the square in Venice, she’s the one who facilitates the dipping of the Madeleine in tea that sets everything moving. Young Marcel dips the biscuit in tea… in Tante Leonie’s room at the start of the novel, in Combray. And old Marcel has a series of epiphanies in the library of the Guermantes at the end of the novel, attaining (in my opinion) the stature of a Saint Mark, saint of The Book.
Tante Léonie is Madame Octave- the perfect name- from the Latin Octava, or the eighth day. Not only is the steeple described in this way: “I seemed to have mounted suddenly far higher, to have become truly remote, like a song whose singer breaks into falsetto, an octave above the accompanying air.” It is also Mme. Octave herself, constantly worrying about the Elevation.
“If she loses any more time on the way I should not be at all surprised if she got in after the Elevation.”
Has Eulalie gone yet? Would you believe it; I forgot to ask her whether Mme. Goupil arrived in church before the Elevation. Run after her, quick!”
Of course we have to laugh at the cure’s suggestion to Tante Leonie that she climb the 97 stairs of the belfry to view the vistas and plains. She may be Madame Octave, but the climb will be left to Proust as he sets the intervals of his seven books.**
“But what is unquestionably the most remarkable thing about our church is the view from the belfry, which is full of grandeur. Certainly in your case, since you are not very strong, I should never recommend you to climb our seven and ninety steps, just half the number they have in the famous cathedral at Milan. It is quite tiring enough for the most active person, especially as you have to go on your hands and knees, if you don’t wish to crack your skull, and you collect all the cobwebs off the staircase upon your clothes. In any case you should be well wrapped up,” he went on, without noticing my aunt’s fury at the mere suggestion that she could ever, possibly, be capable of climbing into his belfry, “for there’s a strong breeze there, once you get to the top. Some people even assure me that they have felt the chill of death up there. No matter, on Sundays there are always clubs and societies, who come, some of them, long distances to admire our beautiful panorama, and they always go home charmed. Wait now, next Sunday, if the weather holds, you will be sure to find a lot of people there, for Rogation-tide.”
And yet the parallel is there- that the Lion of St. Mark sits atop the tower overlooking Venice. From Tante Leonie to the Lion of St. Mark, the journey up to the clocktower to survey the landscape (as at the end of the Recherche) is thematically woven into the text.
We can see the parallels between Tante Léonie in her room, and Marcel in his, in the first volume of the seven, the climb and the perspective a modest one: “…as though all Combray had consisted of but two floors joined by a slender staircase, and as though there had been no time there but seven o’clock at night.” No way to reach the eighth note.
At the end, it’s the vista from high above. I quote a passage from the last paragraph of the novel.
“…as though men were perched upon living stilts which keep on growing,
reaching the height of church-towers, until walking becomes difficult
and dangerous and, at last, they fall. I was terrified that my own
were already so high beneath me…”
**Note that I never thought about there being seven notes but one octave. The reason is this (Answer from Quora): “Octave” comes from the fact that there are 8 notes in total when counting both the starting and ending notes. This includes the first and last notes, which are the same note but with a frequency that is either half or double that of the other.”