The unwritten subtext of In Search of Lost Time (Remembrance of Things Past)

Considering how much I've written and posted on social class and literature, it's kind of odd that I'm half-way through Marcel Proust's "In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower," 2nd volume of In Search of Lost Time (aka Remembrance of Things Past) and I have not yet touched this issue. Why? Proust himself focuses on class quite a bit, but in the narrowest and most circumscribed manner. In the passages I've just read in this volume he has a little exposition on the aristocracy/nobility and its relation with the "lower" classes - how when a nobleman makes conversation with those "below" him he can develop a reputation as such a "great guy," someone you can really relate to (my words, not Proust's obviously) - but as soon as it's time to marry off his daughter he'll choose an absolute dolt so long as he's got a title. Proust has no sympathy whatever for the many marquises and princesses he writes about - but admittedly they're an easy target and he doesn't much care for anyone or any class, for that matter. The great subtext is that the characters throughout the Search are incredibly privileged, they have essentially no serious working lives, they spend huge amounts of time gossiping and angling for status and stabbing one another in the back - the only hero is the narrator himself, because of his extraordinary perception, style, and humor - but isn't his world too circumscribed? Isn't there a vast world beyond the salons and drawing rooms that he's entirely unaware of? Why, with all his perspicacity, does he never examine the society that affords him his prestige and his leisure - obviously at the expense of others? Proust examines life with greater depth and detail than any other novelist, but there are vast areas of human experience that are unexamined in his work as well. I will continue to think about this matter, the unwritten subtext of the Search, and try to determine what it means exactly.