The snob of Combray, undone by the narrator’s flat verdict, whose scant standing rises regardless: by the end he has the title he pretended to despise.
Legrandin is the engineer who talks like a poet and will not introduce the narrator’s family to his sister, and the novel announces in advance that it will change our opinion of him. It does. His scenes on this page sit among the lowest of any character here and stay there, cut by the narrator’s exposure of his hypocrisy and, later, by the sight of him as a hollow, ghostly version of himself. His standing is measured only a handful of times, and those few readings drift upward, fittingly, since by the final matinée he has quietly acquired a title. Belonging is barely staged. The readings say what the narrator says: il était snob.
19 compared passages · 19 distinct opponents
Last comparison: Le Temps retrouvé — IV. Le Bal de têtes, ¶16–20
24 appearing passages; 37 pair comparisons; 12.63 total comparison weight. Counts describe evidence, not independent observations.
Not assessed: outside the original reference set. This does not imply stability.
5 compared passages · 9 distinct opponents
Last comparison: Albertine disparue — IV, ¶6–10
24 appearing passages; 11 pair comparisons; 2.70 total comparison weight. Counts describe evidence, not independent observations.
Not assessed: outside the original reference set. This does not imply stability.
2 compared passages · 2 distinct opponents
Last comparison: Le Temps retrouvé — IV. Le Bal de têtes, ¶51–55
24 appearing passages; 2 pair comparisons; 0.63 total comparison weight. Counts describe evidence, not independent observations.
Not assessed: outside the original reference set. This does not imply stability.
How the passages involving Legrandin leave them, from Combray to the Bal de têtes. 1500 is even; higher is better.
Hover the chart for the level at any point. The band is ± one standard deviation; faint dots are single passages (linked), which swing further than the line and are clipped to the chart.
Smoothed with later evidence. Compare within one lens at matching narrative positions—not across lenses or different endpoint dates. Lines connect fitted nodes and do not assert observations between them.
1500 is a scale reference, not an assigned score for unrated characters. The vertical scale adapts to this selection. Single observations are shown as points, not hidden.
Passage descriptions come from the fixed annotations. They describe local readings, not guaranteed causes of a rating change.