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Stendhal
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Stendhal
French author
pseudonym of Marie-henri Beyle
born Jan. 23, 1783, Grenoble, Fr.
died March 23, 1842, Paris
Main
one of the most original and complex French writers of the first half of
the 19th century, chiefly known for his works of fiction. His finest
novels are Le Rouge et le noir (1830; The Red and the Black) and La
Chartreuse de Parme (1839; The Charterhouse of Parma).
Life.
Stendhal is only one of the many pseudonyms Henri Beyle adopted. His
father, Chérubin Beyle, was a barrister in Grenoble’s high court of
justice. Henri’s mother died when he was seven, and this loss, which he
felt keenly, increased his sense of solitude and his resentment toward
his father. But, though he tended throughout his life to stress the
dreary and oppressive atmosphere of his home after his mother’s death,
there is no reason to believe that he was deprived of affection. As a
student he grew interested in literature and mathematics. In 1799 he
left for Paris, ostensibly to prepare for the entrance examination to
the École Polytechnique, but in reality to escape from Grenoble and from
paternal rule.
His secret ambition on arriving in Paris was to become a successful
playwright. But some highly placed relatives of his, the Darus, obtained
an appointment for him as second lieutenant in the French military
forces stationed in Italy. This led him to discover Piedmont, Lombardy,
and the delights of Milan. The culture and landscape of Italy were the
revelation that was to play a psychologically and thematically
determining role in his life and works.
In 1802 the 19-year-old Henri Beyle was back in Paris and at work on
a number of literary projects, none of which he completed. He dreamed of
becoming a modern Molière, enrolled in drama classes, worked at ridding
himself of his provincial accent, and fell in love with a second-rate
actress (Mélanie Louason), whom he followed to Marseille. By then he was
keeping a diary (posthumously published as his Journal) and writing
other texts dealing with his intimate thoughts.
The year 1806 proved to be a turning point. Count Pierre Daru, having
been appointed intendant-general of Napoleon’s army, had his young
protégé sent as an adjunct military commissary to the German city of
Brunswick. This was the beginning of an administrative career in the
French army that allowed Henri Beyle to discover parts of Germany and
Austria. His army appointment gave him a direct experience of the
Napoleonic regime and of Europe at war. He watched Moscow go up in
flames, took part in the French forces’ retreat from Russia, and helped
organize the military defense of the province of Dauphiné back in
France. In 1814, when the French empire fell, he decided to settle in
Italy.
From the moment he took up residence in Milan, his literary vocation
became irreversible. He became friends with Milanese liberals and
Carbonari patriots, discovered the Edinburgh Review, studied music and
the visual arts, and published his first books: Vies de Haydn, de Mozart
et de Métastase (1814; Lives of Haydn, Mozart and Metastasio) and
Histoire de la peinture en Italie (1817; “History of Painting in
Italy”). In these early works Henri Beyle was not always above
plagiarism, which was seasoned, however, with brilliant and original
insights. His travel book Rome, Naples et Florence en 1817 also appeared
(a later version was published in 1826), and this was the first time he
used the pseudonym of Stendhal. Stendhal’s stay in Milan ended in deep
emotional disappointment: Métilde Dembowski, the woman whose memory was
to haunt him for the rest of his life, rejected him as a lover. His
political friendships had meanwhile compromised him in the eyes of the
Austrian occupying authorities, which finally led him to leave Milan in
1821.
From 1821 to 1830, Stendhal’s social and intellectual life in Paris
was very active. He made a name for himself in the salons as a
conversationalist and polemicist. His wit and unconventional views were
much appreciated, and he had notable friendships and love affairs. In
1822 he published De l’amour (On Love), which claims to study the
operations of love dispassionately and objectively, but which can be
read as a hidden confession of Stendhal’s emotional experiences and
longings. His Racine et Shakespeare (1823, 1825) was one of the first
Romantic manifestos to appear in France. In it Stendhal developed the
central idea that each historical period has been “romantic” in its own
time, that Romanticism is a vital aspect of every cultural period.
Stendhal’s literary production during this period was quite varied. In
addition to his regular contributions to English journals, he published
Vie de Rossini (1823; Life of Rossini); his first novel, Armance (1827);
and the travel book Promenades dans Rome (1829). During this period he
also wrote one of his two masterpieces, the novel Le Rouge et le noir
(The Red and the Black), which appeared in 1830.
The year 1830, during which the July Revolution brought the
constitutional monarch Louis-Philippe to the throne in France, marked a
new turning point in Stendhal’s life. He was appointed French consul in
the port of Civitavecchia in the Papal States. In this small town, where
he felt bored and isolated, Stendhal was occupied by endless
administrative chores and found it difficult to write in a sustained
manner. He sought distractions in nearby Rome, absenting himself
frequently from his official duties. Lonely, aware of age and of failing
health, he felt increasingly drawn to autobiography and began Souvenirs
d’égotisme (1892; Memoirs of an Egotist) and Vie de Henri Brulard (1890;
The Life of Henri Brulard), as well as a new and largely
autobiographical novel entitled Lucien Leuwen (1894). All these works
remained uncompleted, though they were published posthumously, and are
now considered among Stendhal’s finest writings.
During his consulate, Stendhal discovered in Rome unpublished
accounts of crimes of passion and grim executions set in the
Renaissance. They became the inspiration for stories he later published
under the title of Chroniques italiennes (“Italian Chronicles”). But it
was only in Paris, where he took up residence again during a prolonged
leave (1836-1839), that Stendhal could undertake new major literary
work. He composed Mémoires d’un touriste; his second masterpiece, the
novel La Chartreuse de Parme (1839; The Charterhouse of Parma); and
began work on a new novel, Lamiel (1889), which he did not live long
enough to complete. He died in 1842 after suffering a stroke while again
on leave in Paris.
Works
During Stendhal’s lifetime, his reputation was largely based on his
books dealing with the arts and with tourism (a term he helped introduce
in France), and on his political writings and conversational wit. His
unconventional views, his hedonistic inclinations tempered by a capacity
for moral and political indignation, his prankish nature and his hatred
of boredom—all constituted for his contemporaries a blend of provocative
contradictions. But the more authentic Stendhal is to be found
elsewhere, and above all in a cluster of favourite ideas: the hostility
to the concept of “ideal beauty,” the notion of modernity, and the
exaltation of energy, passion, and spontaneity. His personal philosophy,
to which he himself gave the name of “Beylisme” (after his real family
name, Beyle) stressed the importance of the “pursuit of happiness” by
combining enthusiasm with rational skepticism, lucidity with willful
surrender to lyric emotions. “Beylisme,” as he understood it, meant
cultivating a private sensibility while developing the art of hiding and
protecting it.
It was in his novels above all, and in his autobiographical writings
(the interchange between these two literary activities remains a
constant feature in his case), that Stendhal’s thoughts are expressed
most fully. But even these texts remain baffling. Their prosaic and
ironic style at first glance hides the intensity of Stendhal’s vision
and the profundity of his views.
Armance (1827) is a somewhat enigmatic novel in which the hero’s
sexual impotence is symbolic of France’s conformist and oppressive
society after the Restoration. The antagonism between the individual and
society is the central subject of The Red and the Black. This realistic
novel depicts the French social order under the Second Restoration
(1815–30). The story centres on a carpenter’s son, Julien Sorel, a
sensitive and intelligent but extremely ambitious youth who, after
seeing no road to power in the military after Napoleon’s fall,
endeavours to make his mark in the church. Viewing himself as an
unsentimental opportunist, he employs seduction as a means to
advancement, first with Madame de Rênal, whose children he is employed
to tutor. After then spending some time in a seminary, he leaves the
provinces and goes to Paris, where he seduces the aristocratic Mathilde,
the daughter of his second employer. The book ends with Julien’s
execution for the attempted murder of Madame de Rênal after she had
jeopardized his projected marriage to Mathilde.
The title of The Red and the Black apparently refers to both the
tensions in Julien’s character and to the conflicting choice he is faced
with in his quest for success: the army (symbolized by the colour red)
or the church (symbolized by the colour black). A variety of other
polarities tempt the ambitious young hero as he sets out with fierce
determination to rise above his lowly condition: the provinces or Paris,
tender love or sexual conquest, happiness through ambition and
achievement or happiness through reverie and the cultivation of
selfhood. Careerism, political opportunism, the climate of fear and
denunciation in Restoration France, a critique of bourgeois
materialistic values—all these are dealt with in a subtle and incisive
manner in a novel that is based on a newspaper account of a contemporary
crime of passion. Julien Sorel, the central character, is a study in
psychological complexity who both attracts and repels the reader. Timid
and aggressive, sensitive and ruthless, vulnerable and supremely
ambitious, Julien ultimately comes to realize, in prison, the vanity of
worldly success and the superior value of love and a rich inner life.
The Red and the Black also offers delicate portraits of two feminine
figures, the maternal Madame de Renal and the romantic young aristocrat
Mathilde de La Mole. At every point, the novel challenges conventions
and denounces the sham of societal values. As a literary achievement, it
is remarkable for its blend of comedy, satire, and ironic lyricism.
The uncompleted Lucien Leuwen (1894) is perhaps the most
autobiographical of Stendhal’s novels. The memory of Métilde Dembowski
hovers over the relationship between the young hero of the title and
Madame de Chasteller. This biting fictional assessment of French society
and politics during the reign of Louis-Philippe also describes a basic
father-son conflict that corresponds to the conflicting ethos of two
distinct historical periods. As it stands, despite its imperfections and
uncompleted form, Lucien Leuwen contains some of Stendhal’s finest pages
of psychological and social analysis, as well as delicate evocations of
a young lover’s emotional states.
The Charterhouse of Parma is Stendhal’s other masterpiece. It fuses
elements of Renaissance chronicles, fictional and historical sources,
recent historical events (the Napoleonic regime in Italy, the Battle of
Waterloo, the Austrian occupation of Milan), and an imaginative, almost
dreamlike transposition of contemporary reality into fictional terms.
The novel is set mainly in the court of Parma, Italy, in the early 19th
century. Fabrice del Dongo, a young aristocrat and ardent admirer of
Napoleon, goes to Paris to join the French army and is present at the
Battle of Waterloo. He returns thereafter to Parma and enters the church
for worldly advantage under the sponsorship of his aunt, the Duchess de
Sanseverina, who is the mistress of the chief minister of Parma, Count
Mosca. Following an affair with an actress, Fabrice kills a rival, is
imprisoned, escapes, and is pardoned. In prison Fabrice falls in love
with Clélia Conti, the daughter of the citadel’s governor. He continues
his affair with her after she marries, and he becomes a high-ranking
ecclesiastic and an admired preacher. The death of their child and then
of Clélia herself causes Fabrice to retire to the Carthusian monastery,
or charterhouse, of Parma, where he dies.
The incongruous yet always harmonious combination of lyricism and
high comedy, of realism and dreamlike atmosphere, of The Charterhouse of
Parma allows the author to caricaturize the petty tyranny of
post-Napoleonic Europe, to question public morality, and to assert the
prerogatives of love’s follies. There are subtly drawn portraits of the
naive and idealistic young Fabrice del Dongo (notably at the Battle of
Waterloo); of his courageous and passionate aunt, the Duchess de
Sanseverina; of her lover, the benevolent Machiavellian statesman Count
Mosca; and of the young and innocent Clélia Conti, the daughter of
Fabrice’s jailer, who falls in love with the handsome prisoner. Passion
in all its forms is the novel’s recurrent theme. And once again, the
young hero learns the deeper lessons of spirituality, love, and freedom
within the liberating confines of a prison cell.
Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of The Charterhouse of Parma is
its highly sophisticated psychology. Rejecting traditional notions of a
fixed and determined psychological makeup, Stendhal never defines his
characters and instead depicts individuals in the process of becoming.
His literary devices (his authorial comments, the improvisational tone
of his narration) seem to grant his characters the freedom to discover
themselves. Various forms of freedom are Stendhal’s ultimate
preoccupation, which probably explains why he repeatedly explores the
ambiguities of the prison image. True freedom, in the world of Stendhal,
reveals itself in the context of the cell, once confinement becomes the
symbol of the inner world of dreams and longings. His novels thus
illustrate metaphorically the fundamental conflict between the demands
of society and those of the individual.
Stendhal’s autobiographical writings, Souvenirs d’égotisme (1892;
Memoirs of an Egotist) and Vie de Henri Brulard (1890; The Life of Henri
Brulard), are among his most original achievements. Behind their
vivacity and charming digressions, they reveal the uneasiness of a
tender-hearted and fundamentally insecure human being wearing various
masks. The Life of Henri Brulard in particular is a masterpiece of
ironic self-searching and self-creation, in which the memories of
childhood are closely interwoven with the liberating joy of writing.
Stendhal’s writings and his personality were marked by a striking
independence of mind. He was a romantic who kept his distance from
Romanticism, an antiauthoritarian with a nostalgia for the
pre-Revolutionary world, a dreamer and tender-hearted enthusiast who
passed himself off as a cynic. His writings combine lyrical fervour with
a rationalist’s passion for analysis. Stendhal’s contemporaries,
however, found it difficult to appreciate his nimble and ironic
sensibility. The novelist Honoré de Balzac, in a famous article on The
Charterhouse of Parma published in La Revue parisienne in 1840, was the
only one to recognize his genius as a novelist. Stendhal’s literary fame
came late in the 19th century, and this posthumous fame has steadily
grown since then, largely because of the devotion of “Beylistes” or
“Stendhalians” who have made of him a true cult. Stendhal has now come
to be recognized as one of the great French masters of the novel in the
19th century.
Victor Brombert
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The Charterhouse of Parma
Stendhal
1783-1842
Movement is the operative principle of this story, which shifts
quickly between several countries and decades. Many readers have
remarked upon the disconcerting rapidity of these transitions,
bringing narrative enjoyment to the foreground, but also
perplexing us as to the overall shape of the story.
The novel's sense of movement is achieved not by progression,
but by a constantly managed undercutting, which extends to
character, theme, and judgement. We are told at the outset that
this is the story of the Duchess Sanseverina, but, at least
initially, its hero appears to be her idealistic nephew,
Fabrice. Yet his principled bravery is not allowed to stand
either; arriving at Waterloo his expectation of the camaraderie
of war is undermined when his compatriots steal his horse. In
the parts of the novel where summaries of a period of years
alternate with passages spanning only hours, limpidity of
duration is matched by an eievation of perspective—these range
from the bell tower of Fabrice's childhood church, to the
Farnese Tower in which he is incarcerated at the heart of the
story. With imprisonment as its central theme, Stendhal's
extreme freedom with the narrative seems resonantly undermining.
As theme defeats theme, and one aspect of narrative technique
shows up the limitations of another, the novel operates
according to its own exhilarating logic.
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The Red and the Black
Stendhal
1783-1842
Set in France in the 1830s, Le Rouge et le Noir chronicles
Julien Sorel's duplicitous rise to power and
hissubsequentfall.The son of a carpenter.Julien seeks initially
to realize his Napoleonic ambitions by joining the priesthood.
Despite some torrid liaisons during his training, Julien
succeeds in becoming a priest and eagerly accepts the invitation
of the Marquis de la Mole to become his personal secretary. Even
Julien's affair with the Marquis' daughter, Mathilde, is the
occasion of his ennoblement so that he can marry her without
scandal. Before Julien has an opportunity to enjoy his
aristocratic life, however, the Marquis receives from Mme de
Renal (another of Julien's conquests when he was training for
the priesthood) a letter that exposes him as a fraud. Prevented
from marrying Mathildejulien exacts revenge.
Sometimes perceived as a bit too melodramatic to appeal to
modern literary taste. The Red and the Black is immensely
important in terms of the development of the novel as an art
form. On the one hand it is a tale very much in the Romantic
tradition. Sorel may be unscrupulous and roguish in the pursuit
of his ambitions, yet set against a petty and constraining
bourgeois French society, his energy and sheer gumption often
lure the reader into a reluctant rapport. It is in Stendhal's
narrative style, however, that this novel has proved to be most
influential. In largely being told from the vantage point of
each character's state of mind, the novel's convincing
psychological realism prompted Emile Zola to proclaim it the
first truly "modern" novel. It is for this reason, apart from
the fact that it is a rollicking good yarn, that The Red and the
Black should be reserved a place on every serious reader's
bookshelf.
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THE RED AND THE BLACK
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Type of work: Novel
Author: Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle, 1783-1842)
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: Early nineteenth century
Locale: France
First published: Le Rouge et le noir, 1830 (English translation,
1898)
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In this novel whose chief character is a villain, Stendhal
analyzes the psychological undercurrents of Julien Sorel's personality,
showing how struggle and temptation shaped his energetic but morbidly
introspective nature. The novel is considered Stendhal's greatest work,
equally for its portrait ofSorel and its satire of French society during
the Bourbon restoration.
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Principal Characters
Julien Sorel (zhu-lyan' so-гёГ), a son of a lawyer but an opportunist
whose brilliant intellect, great ambition, and self-pride elevate him
for a time, only to defeat him in the end. The youthful protege of a
local priest in the French town of Verieres, Julien becomes the beloved
tutor of the mayor's children and the lover of that aristocratic
official's wife. Brazen, hypocritical, but shrewd, this contradictory
hero espouses Napoleonic sentiments yet believes that his own salvation
is through the Church. Pushed by scandal into a seminary, he proudly
stands aloof from its politics and manages to become a secretary to one
of the first men in France. Though he is insensitive to all feelings,
his intellect again raises him in esteem to the point where he seduces
as well as is seduced by the nobleman's daughter, a lively, intellectual
young woman. Playing both ends against the middle—the middle being a
respected position and a respectable income—he brings about his own
downfall through attempted murder of his first mistress after she has
revealed his villainy to his noble benefactor.
Madame de Renal (da гё-паГ), Julien Sorel's first mistress and greatest
love, a beautiful, compassionate, though bigoted woman. Although she
vacillates always between religiosity and passion, she truly loves the
ascetic-looking younger man and dies shortly after he has been executed
for his attempt to kill her. Her allegiance to the tutor is the more
remarkable because of her clever deceptions, necessary to prevent an
immediate tragedy brought about by her husband's vindictiveness. In the
end religiosity predominates; she is torn by anguish, remorse, and guilt
and dies while embracing her children three days after the death of her
lover.
Monsieur de Renal (тэ-syoe' da гб-паГ), the miserly mayor and village
aristocrat, who desperately seeks status by hiring a tutor for his
children. Vulgar and greedy to an extreme, this boorish landowner is
elevated by the Marquis de La Mole, who later became Julien's employer.
He loses his wife to a commoner's love and his position to his
republican enemy.
Mathilde de La Mole (ma-teld' da la тбГ), a proud, intelligent
aristocrat destined to become a duchess but fated to love out of her
class. Desirous of the unexpected and bored with the conventionality of
her life, she at first seeks distraction in lovemaking with Julien
Sorel. When he pretends boredom, she pursues him shamelessly. Her
pregnancy sets off a chain of tragic events which will leave her unborn
child without name or father. After Julien's execution her romantic
nature causes her to initiate the deed of a famous ancestress; she
buries her lover's head and decorates his cave tomb with marble so that
it resembles a shrine.
The Marquis de La Mole (da la тбГ), a peer of France and the wealthiest
landowner in the province. He is a subtle, learned aristocrat who
through caprice gambles on a young man's genius, through kindness makes
a gentleman of him, and through pride in family negotiates his downfall.
Although he admires his brilliant secretary, the marquis can never rid
himself of his social ambitions for his beautiful and intelligent
daughter, and to bring about Julien Sorel's downfall he conspires to
gain incriminating evidence against the young man.
The Marquise de La Mole, an aristocrat proud of her noble ancestors.
The Comte de La Mole, their son, a pleasant young man conditioned to
fashionable Parisian life, in which ideas are neither encouraged nor
discussed.
Fouque (foo-ka'), a bourgeois but devoted friend of Julien Sorel. Acting
as ballast for his mercurial friend, he offers Julien a good position in
his lumber business, financial support for his studies, and finally his
whole fortune to free him after his arrest.
The Abbe Chelan (shalan'), the local parish priest, who teaches and
advances the fortune of Julien Sorel. The first to discover the tragic
duality of protege's nature, he nevertheless supports him in his
ambitions and grieves over his misadventures.
The Abbe Pirard (pe-rar'), the director of the seminary at Besancon,
where Julien Sorel studies. He obtains for his brilliant pupil the post
of secretary to the Marquis de La Mole. An irascible Jansenist among
Jesuits, this learned priest sees in Sorel genius and contradiction. In
spite of these contradictions, Pirard helps to elevate the youth to the
munificence of courtly Paris. Monsieur Valenod (va-lg-no'), a provincial
official grown prosperous on graft. Jealous because Monsieur de Renal
has hired a tutor for his children and because his own advances to
Madame de Renal have been unsuccessful, he writes an anonymous letter
that reveals the love affair between Julien Sorel and his employer's
wife.
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The Story
Julien Sorel was the son of a carpenter in the little town of Verrieres,
France. Napoleon had fallen, but he still had many admirers, and Julien
was one of these. Julien pretended to be deeply religious. Now that
Napoleon had been defeated, he believed that the church rather than the
army was the way to power. Because of his assumed piety and his
intelligence, Julien was appointed as tutor to the children of Monsieur
de Renal, the mayor of the village.
Madame de Renal had done her duty all of her life. Although she was a
good wife and a good mother, she had never been in love with her
husband, a coarse man who would hardly inspire love in any woman. Madame
de Renal was attracted to the pale young tutor and fell completely in
love with him. Julien, thinking it his duty to himself, made love to her
in order to gain power over her. He discovered after a time that he had
really fallen in love with Madame de Renal.
When Julien went on a holiday to visit Fouque, a poor friend, Fouque
tried to persuade Julien to go into the lumber business with him. Julien
declined; he enjoyed too much the power he held over his mistress.
The love affair was revealed to Monsieur de Renal by an anonymous letter
written by Monsieur Valenod, the local official in charge of the
poorhouse. He had become rich on graft, and he was jealous because
Monsieur de Renal had hired Julien as a tutor. He had also made
unsuccessful advances to Madame de Renal at one time.
The lovers were able to smooth over the situation to some extent.
Monsieur de Renal agreed to send Julien to the seminary at Besanijon,
principally to keep him from becoming tutor at Monsieur Valenod's house.
After Julien had departed, Madame de Renal was filled with remorse. Her
conscience suffered because of her adultery, and she became extremely
religious.
Julien did not get on well at the seminary, for he found it full of
hypocrites. The students did not like him and feared his sharp
intelligence. His only friend was the Abbe Pirard, a highly moral man.
One day Julien went to help decorate the cathedral and by chance found
Madame de Renal there. She fainted, but he could not help her because
his duties called him elsewhere. The experience left him weak and
shaken.
The Abbe Pirard lost his position at the seminary because he had
supported the Marquis de La Mole, who was engaged in a lawsuit against
Monsieur de Frilair, Vicar General of Besanjon. When the Abbe Pirard
left the seminary, the marquis obtained a living for him in Paris. He
also hired Julien as his secretary.
Julien was thankful for his chance to leave the seminary. On his way to
Paris he called secretly upon Madame de Renal. At first she repulsed his
advances, conscious of her great sin. At last, however, she yielded once
again to his pleadings. Monsieur de Renal became suspicious and decided
to search his wife's room. To escape discovery, Julien jumped out the
window, barely escaping with his life.
Finding Julien a good worker, the marquis entrusted him with many of the
details of his business. Julien was also allowed to dine with the family
and to mingle with the guests afterward. He found the Marquise de La
Mole to be extremely proud of her nobility. Her daughter, Mathilde,
seemed to be of the same type, a reserved girl with beautiful eyes. Her
son, the Comte de La Mole, was an extremely polite and pleasant young
man. Julien, however, found Parisian high society boring. No one was
allowed to discuss ideas.
Julien enjoyed stealing volumes of Voltaire from the marquis' library
and reading them in his room. He was astonished when he discovered that
Mathilde was doing the same thing. Before long, they began to spend much
of their time together, although Julien was always conscious of his
position as servant and was quick to be insulted by Mathilde's pride.
The girl fell in love with him because he was so different from the dull
young men of her own class.
After Julien had spent two nights with her, Mathilde decided that it was
degrading to be in love with a secretary. Her pride was an insult to
Julien. Smarting, he planned to gain power over her and, consequently,
over the household.
Meanwhile the marquis had entrusted Julien with a diplomatic mission on
behalf of the nobility and clergy who wanted the monarchy reestablished.
On his mission Julien met an old friend who advised him how to win
Mathilde again. Upon his return he put his friend's plan into effect.
He began to pay court to a virtuous lady who was often a visitor in the
de La Mole home. He began a correspondence with her, at the same time
neglecting Mathilde. Then Mathilde, thinking that Julien was lost to
her, discovered how much she loved him. She threw herself at his feet.
Julien had won; but this time he would not let her gain the upper hand.
He continued to treat Ma-thilde coldly as her passion increased. In this
way he maintained his power.
Mathilde became pregnant. She was joyful, for now, she thought, Julien
would know how much she cared for him. She had made the supreme
sacrifice; she would now have to marry Julien and give up her place in
society. Julien, however, was not so happy as Mathilde over her
condition, for he feared the results when Mathilde told her father.
At first the marquis was furious. Eventually, he saw only one way out of
the difficulty; he would make Julien rich and respectable. He gave
Julien a fortune, a title, and a commission in the army. Overwhelmed
with his new wealth and power, Julien scarcely gave a thought to
Mathilde.
Then the marquis received a letter from Madame de Renal, whom Julien had
suggested to the marquis for a character recommendation. Madame de Renal
was again filled with religious fervor; she revealed to the marquis the
whole story of Julien's villainy. The marquis immediately refused to let
Julien marry his daughter.
Julien's plans for glory and power were ruined. In a fit of rage he rode
to Verrieres, where he found Madame de Renal at church. He fired two
shots at her before he was arrested and taken off to prison. There he
promptly admitted his guilt, for he was ready to die. He had his
revenge.
Mathilde, still madly in love with Julien, arrived in Verrieres and
tried to bribe the jury. Fouque arrived and begged Julien to try to
escape, but Julien ignored the efforts of his friends to help.
He was tried, found guilty, and given the death sentence, even though
his bullets had not killed Madame de Renal. In fact, his action had only
rekindled her passion for him. She visited him and begged him to appeal
his sentence. The two were as much in love as they had been before. When
Monsieur de Renal ordered his wife to come home, Julien was left again
to his dreams. He had lost his one great love—Madame de Renal. The
colorless Mathilde only bored and angered him by her continued
solicitude.
Julien went calmly to his death on the appointed day. The faithful
Fouque obtained the body in order to bury it in a cave in the mountains,
where Julien had once been fond of going to indulge in his daydreams of
power.
According to a family legend a woman had once loved a famous ancestor of
Mathilde's with an extreme passion. When the ancestor was executed, the
woman had taken his severed head and buried it. Mathilde, who had always
admired this family legend, did the same for Julien. After the funeral
ceremony at the cave, she dug a grave with her own hands and buried
Julien's head. Later, she had the cave decorated with Italian marble.
Madame de Renal did not go to the funeral; but three days after Julien's
death, she died while embracing her children.
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Critical Evaluation
Stendhal's The Red and the Black is one of the most polished and refined
stories in the literary crown of European literature. Stendhal took the
French novel from the hands of Romantic writers such as Chateaubriand
and honed it into a rapier of social criticism and philosophical
exposition. It is the content of Stendhal's novels that marks him as a
harbinger, one who influenced a century of Continental literary
epigones. He was the first French writer to battle with the social and
philosophical implications inherent in the modern creed known as
liberalism. Because liberalism was the prevailing doctrine of the
emergent French middle class, and because Stendhal sought to assess the
social attitudes of that class, he must be considered as the first
significant bourgeois novelist. The Red and the Black amalgamates the
best of Stendhal's abilities as refiner and innovator.
Like each of Stendhal's novels The Red and the Black is
autobiographical. Published in 1830, the work reflects the author's
ideas rather than the outer events of his life. Thus to appreciate fully
the novel, it is necessary to know the background of Stendhal's life and
the broad social developments which determined the writer's complex and
often contradictory Weltanschauung.
Stendhal was born into a provincial bourgeois family in Grenoble. His
family background was a mixture of contradictions. The father was a
businessman of the middle class whose aggressive, pragmatic, Philistine
habits the son professed to loathe. His mother's aristocratic family,
however, attracted him. To Stendhal, the family appeared to live a
balanced, harmonious life with its social as well as cultural
influences. It was a world of social hierarchy where all classes knew
their place. Yet despite his preference for the world of the provincial
aristocrat, Stendhal followed a life which was markedly bourgeois in
orientation and philosophy. He implicitly accepted the liberal ideas
articulated in the French Revolution and became an avid supporter of
Napoleon, the personification of French liberalism. Napoleon championed
the notion of a French civil service staffed by men of talent rather
than of high birth as had been the case in the pre-Napoleonic world. The
writer launched his career within Napoleon's regime. He marched through
Europe within Napoleon's armies and was present in the retreat from
Moscow. Following Napoleon's defeat, Stendhal exiled himself to Milan,
Italy. He returned to Paris in 1821 and compromised his values to the
ultraconservalive political climate then existing in France. It was not
a difficult compromise since the official values espoused in Paris were
similar to those expressed by the maternal side of Stendhal's family.
Stendhal's life in France between 1821 and 1830 was similar to that of
the hero of The Red and the Black, Julien Sorel. He carried the social
and intellectual baggage appropriate for survival in the intricate
Parisian world.
Liberalism was the intellectual cloak of the French Revolution and
Napoleon the child of the revolution. In Stendhal's France, the most
important arrow in a liberal's quiver was his belief in
self-determination. The liberal felt that man was basically reasonable
and hence perfectible; he believed that man needed a society where
talent could freely rise to its highest level of accomplishment and find
expression in whatever political, economic, or intellectual manner
deemed appropriate by the individual. This creed naturally appealed to
those segments of French society which had been prevented by
aristocratic privilege from assuming worthwhile positions in the French
civil service. Stendhal aimed to make his mark in France by ascribing to
this philosophy. Yet, however much Stendhal might have believed in
French liberalism, or thought he believed in it, he was still
troubled—aristocrat that he partly was—by the lack of hierarchy in the
liberal vision of society. Indeed, Julien's love affairs for Madame de
Renal, the wife of the provincial bourgeois mayor, and Mathilde de La
Mole, the daughter of a French aristocrat, are symbolic of his own
intellectual "affairs" with modern bourgeois liberalism and traditional
aristocratic conservatism.
Was it possible to fuse such disparate social attitudes? Where were the
limits on a person's right to individual self-determination? What were
the social implications of such a philosophy? In an attempt to answer
these questions, Stendhal wrote The Red and the Black. Stendhal's own
confusion about his social values does not detract from the impact of
his novel; in fact, it only enhances its historical value, for French
society suffered from the same confusion. Thus, The Red and the Black is
both a personal testament and a social document, a creative fusion of
diverse and even contradictory elements into an artistic unity.
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