The story takes place in a beach town, simply called "C." The narrator does not provide much information about the town itself, other than to explain that the aristocracy spends only a few weeks there a year, while he and his family live there permanently. The girls that come to the town are notably different from the rest of the people who live there, and they think themselves superior to the town's inhabitants.

"C." likely refers to Combray, the fictional French town in which the narrator of In Search of Lost Time spent much of his childhood. "Combray" is the first part of the first volume of In Search of Lost Time, entitled Swann's Way. At Combray, the narrator becomes intimately familiar with the nuances of social interaction by observing his neighbors and members of his family from a young age.