Proust compared nineteenth-century French class rigidity to a caste system

Evidence

And even in postrevolutionary nineteenth-century France, social rigidity persisted on a tacit level. Marcel Proust wrote, “Middle-class people in those days took what was almost a Hindu view of society, which they held to consist of sharply defined castes, so that everyone at his birth found himself called to that station in life which his parents already occupied, and from which nothing, save the accident of an exceptional career or of a ‘good’ marriage, could extract you and translate you to a superior caste.” — W. David Marx, Status and Culture, 80

Categorization

• XREF: Proust using ‘Hindu view of society’ / caste as the archetype of birth-fixed hierarchy directly evokes the caste material in Annihilation of Caste — the French use of caste as metaphor for extreme rigidity parallels Ambedkar on ‘Hindu society as castes.’ — connects to: Nineteenth-century ethnology subsumed caste into biologically determined race essences — Ambedkar, B R, Annihilation of Caste_ The Annotated…, 1067; The class system coexisted with political equality and blocked republics; Social historians reconceived class as crafted relations rather than a structural given

Broader Connections

• The class system coexisted with political equality and blocked republics #qualifies (0.75)
• Social historians reconceived class as crafted relations rather than a structural given #complicates (0.74)
• Nineteenth-century ethnology subsumed caste into biologically determined race essences #expands (0.72) — Ambedkar, B R, Annihilation of Caste_ The Annotated…, 1067