The Red and the Black

Oh love, love, love! Just like Love in the Time of Cholera, this is book has absolutely nothing to do with it. It has plenty though to do with what people confuse love to be: infatuation and sex.

Julien Sorel is a man born out of time. He’s vain, intellectually gifted, ambitious and foolhardy in his attempts to realise this ambition. But the entire class structure of the re-established post-Revolutionary French class system stands in his way. Blind to social barriers, he ploughs on and, in a few short years, burns his candle to its base. In doing so, he lies, cheats, betrays, plots and puts on such a kaleidoscopic display of hypocrisy a chameleon would be proud. All along the way he drags two women from the same family and leads them show more on a merry dance from the heights of fashionable France to the depths of the dungeons of prison.

This has been described as satire, but it is by far the darkest satire I’ve ever read. Swift’s satire, which I love, is so light and airy. Cervantes lighter still. But Stendhal’s is depressing realistic. The church and clergy come off particularly badly. Mind you, he had plenty of material to work with there. Where I think Swift would have made a character a buffoon, Stendhal makes them archly demonic. I don’t think there was a single character in this long and well-populated novel that wasn’t repugnant to me in some way. Yuck!

Yet despite the depressing backdrop and vile characters, you’re able somehow to continue reading to the end. It’s a bit like a literary version of those police camera videos; you know it’s all horrifying and destroying people’s lives but you’re somehow captivated. Perhaps this is Stendhal’s genius? He’s painted my own heart as dark as those of his characters! Ha!

So, a few shivers later, I can lay this one aside for good… show less

An Angry Young Man in 1820s France
More than 35 years after first reading it, I revisited this classic. And it's always striking how many other things you then notice. This, of course, has to do with my own life and reading experience, but certainly also with the rich content of this novel, the ultimate hallmark of a true classic. What struck me most this time was the unique character of the protagonist, Julien Sorel: his inferiority complex, his intense aversion to almost everyone superior to him, his boundless, Napoleonic ambition, and finally and above all, his manipulative behavior, especially with women. Perhaps I'm wrong, but in many ways, Sorel is what we would now call a narcissistic character.
A second striking feature of this show more novel: Stendhal constantly delves into the minds of the various characters, extensively presenting their observations, reflections, considerations, and endlessly meandering reasoning in the form of indirect interior monologues. I don't know if he's the first to do this so emphatically, because at times I saw a kinship with, for example, Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, in which the protagonists' perceptions and internal ruminations also play such a significant role. I must add, however, that in my opinion, Stendhal does exaggerate this feature: the constantly meandering, tormented, and at times almost paranoid reflections of his characters, and especially the ebb and flow of emotional attraction and repulsion between Julien and his female "conquests"... it was sometimes a bit much for me. This is also coupled with the very exaggerated pathos we know from Romanticism.
The third thing that really struck me is the socio-political context and message. Stendhal, like Balzac, illuminates French society during the Restoration, the period 1815-1830, when the monarchy had been restored, conservative forces seemed to have the upper hand, but the revolutionary fire still smoldered. He highlights the struggle between liberals (supporters of the Enlightenment and the Revolution) and the ultras (the mostly Catholic conservatives), even in the small provincial town of Verrières, where the first part of this novel takes place. In the second part, a veritable conspiracy of the ultras is revealed, in which Julien becomes involved. In these narrative elements, but also in many other places, Stendhal paints a disconcerting picture of the narrow-minded bourgeois, aristocratic, and clerical milieus in which Julien moves. What is particularly striking is that Julien himself, as a character, embodies the smoldering revolutionary fire that was not extinguished in 1815 and will undoubtedly resurface. This had already happened before 1830, the year this novel was published, and it would erupt that very year, and later, especially in 1848. To a certain extent, one can attribute prophetic gifts to Stendhal, but his merit lies primarily in the unique way he incorporated this into a novel.
This brings us back to Julien Sorel: from the very beginning, it is clear that a raw sense of revolt prevails within him, a sense of inferiority compared to the "ruling classes." Throughout the novel, this will surface in Julien's feelings, thoughts, and actions, culminating in the dramatic event at the end. But it is especially afterwards, during the judicial trial against him, that this revolutionary feeling is made explicit in the form of an unadulterated “J'accuse” addressed to his judges and by extension to the ruling class: “I see men who, without considering what my youth might deserve in terms of pity, will want to punish in me and discourage forever that class of young people who, born into a lower class and somewhat oppressed by poverty, have the good fortune to obtain a good education and the audacity to mingle with what the pride of rich people calls society.”
With this fragment it seems that Stendhal attributes Julien an idealistic attitude. But nothing could be further from the truth: from the very beginning, he makes it clear that Julien is focused on making a fortune in everything he does. And fortune here must be understood in its dual sense: honor and fame, certainly, but primarily money. Almost every observation, almost every reflection, almost every action of Julien is aimed at acquiring prestige and, above all, a lot of money. He shares this with almost all the male characters in this novel: they are foremost concerned with everything and anything for what it will bring them. To the point of absurdity. Disconcerting.
And so we arrive at what I believe to be the true protagonist of this novel: Napoleon Bonaparte. Long dead by the time this novel is set, but still all-consuming and, in that sense, alive. His name still burns on everyone's lips, especially Julien's, for whom Napoleon is the founding example. In this novel, his shadow is visible on almost every page. And I don't think Stendhal meant that in a positive way: power and wealth consumed Napoleon, just as they consume the characters in this story, and—in Julien's case—lead to their downfall.
My second reading of this novel made it clear to me that it is considerably "richer" than I had perceived almost 35 years ago. At the same time, the exaggerated pathos and some less developed characters (especially the female ones are almost all consumed by their emotion and passion) also frequently caused irritation and frustration. But I certainly find Stendhal more digestible than most of Balzac's novels, and his stylistic genius is undeniable. In other words, this is still worthy of the status of a classic work. show less

What recourse for the rural, ambitious and abused son of a French sawyer who wants to rise above his station but to join the army? Except that France is embroiled in a time of peace in the 1820s, so he turns instead to the church though Napoleon is his hero. He will be a man of peace, though he doesn't believe a single word of liturgy or of the Latin Bible he's memorized word and verse. Soon after he is entering Parisian society in the company of the nobility, where his own brand of innate pride suits the company. His own pride is more genuine, being based neither on birth nor wealth. It is both a flaw in his character and a strength as well. His lack of self-doubt - or self-awareness - gives him an edge in his ambitions. In fact it is show more probably their entire impetus, driving everything he does. He does experience real love, but only after his pride leads him into it; never does it come first.

Stendhal's failing is his pacing, especially in the early chapters. He breezes over incidents that could have yielded an abundance of drama, and dwells for pages mining it from scenes that have little to offer. Consequently I'd find myself struggling through it one day, then more deeply absorbed the next. For a man so driven by his ambition, it's curious to observe how little of Julien's story is actually driven by himself. Nearly every step forward is achieved either through chance or by the good will of a mentor. His prodigious memory and a strong work ethic win him recognition, but Julian has no plan. When he does indulge a willful passion, it is only one liable to place all of his gains at risk. These insights are beyond his means to apprehend, given his lack of self-reflection. As things turn out, it's a mercy the illusion holds. show less

I have never been able to read this in translation, so I finally picked it off a shelf in Sherbrooke, Quebec, and was surprised to find it seemed written in haste, almost breathlessly. Maybe no translator can aspire to breathless rendering. This intrigued me, and I read it in a couple weeks, with my "B" level comprehension, but my "A" background in literature.
I found it atmospheric, urgent, engaging. Typically, he starts with a provincial portrait built upon Hobbes, the provincials themselves "less bad, but their cage less gay." The respect of fools, the amazement of children: importance (of a provincial mayor)--is it not something? The puzzle is the contentment of these provincials. Julien Sorel is surely not so.
Well, his saga, his show more ironic take on the decadence of the society he claws his way ahead in, sometimes on a lover's parapet, is gripping today as it was when written. (My missing fifth star may well be due to the level of my French comprehension--I may be grading myself, as Julien Sorel seems to now and then.) show less

When I visited Venice in 2024, I was struck by the dull hues of the paintings in the Doge’s Palace. Unwittingly outing myself as an art naïf, I asked our tour guide if this was a mark of Venetian culture, only to learn that the original paintings had been bright and vivid. Time’s hand, not the artist’s, was responsible for a majestic flatness shared by The Most Serene Republic itself, once master of Mediterranean waves and now a tourist trap for gawking Americans.

Napoleon Bonaparte was equally responsible for the humiliation of Venice and the ennui of France in Stendahl’s novel “The Red and the Black,” set in the author’s present day of 1830. Like the Doge’s paintings, the France trudging through its post-Napoleonic show more hangover is a drab shell. For Julien Sorel, son of a provincial carpenter and closet worshiper of the late master of Europe, the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy is a roadblock to ambition. The day of the common man rising on the strength of his own courage has passed, so the only way to rise now is to play the aristocrats' game better than they do.

As a protagonist, Julien is complicated in ways that are unsettling in these latter days of #MeToo. Julien is blessed with three assets only: an eidetic memory, intense masculine energy, and insatiable ambition. The first opens the circles of great men, the second opens the legs of their ladies, and both support the ravenous hunger of the third. Julien is a climber with a hatred of his social betters fueled by his own insecurities; and one who believes that when the lords of France have lost all heart, only a fool would sacrifice his power to their impotence. But because Julien is a man of feeling, he has a habit of falling in love with his female conquests, and love has a way of undercutting ambition at its roots.

Julien may not be an admirable man, at least not by my standards; but he draws the eye because he’s a meteor cutting across a twilight of fixed stars. The men of the provinces care for nothing but their accounts receivable, the Church is a pack of factions and mercenaries, and Parisian elites scuttle from drawing room to drawing room jumping at shadows of resurgent Jacobins or the poison pens of a hostile liberal press. Ambition rises no further than clinging to what you have; so when a man with Julien’s drive encounters a provincial Madame de Rênal or a Parisian Mathilde de La Mole, they sense in him the dangerous attraction of a flame France hasn’t seen in 15 years.

The thing is, even dangerous flames burn dimly in a pedestrian age. No one is inspired by the corpse of a nation propped up by France’s enemies and animated less by a great soul than by petty politics and grubby merchants. Julien yearns for Napoleon’s splendor, aristocrats yearn for the ancien régime, Mathilde yearns for 16th-century chivalry, and Madame de Rênal is so thoroughly nailed into her class coffin that she doesn’t know enough to yearn for anything. When the glory departs from the temple, the inchoate egoism of a Julien is all that passes for holy fire. Stendahl’s life spanned the entirety of France’s glorious apocalypse, and he clearly found the post-apocalypse a dissatisfying farce. There’s a lesson here, I think, for Americans desperately searching the funhouse mirrors of social media for meaning in the unheroic ebb tide following the titanic tsunamis of the 20th century.

“The Red and the Black” is a profoundly psychological novel, and its lack of action will discourage some readers as surely as its ambiguous morality will discourage the virtuous. The interior lives of the main characters are frothy seas where each charts a lonely voyage of self-discovery or, more often, self-delusion. Prose that seems at first breathless, overwrought, and melodramatic gradually assumes the proportions of an uncomfortable truth: that we are each so infatuated with our own centrality to the universal story that our inner monologues are in fact breathless, and overwrought, and melodramatic. We adore the sounds of our own heartbeats and confuse that for love. We’re discontent with our time and confuse that with keen insight. This incestuous affair with our own souls blinds us not only to our own best interests, but also to the fact that we're not as special as we imagine. Everyone else, it turns out, is just as giddily writing private operas in which we occupy no greater role than supporting actors for their star performances. show less

4+ stars for exceptional writing. I loved the book but, oddly, disliked the protagonist and most of the main characters. The book was originally (in 1830 France) sold as two volumes. The first volume has 30 chapters and the second has 45 chapters.

It took me a while to get the hang of Stendhal's style. Much time is spent inside the heads of the various characters. (In fact, I understand Stendhal is considered to be the creator of the psychological novel.) The style issue for me was that he jumped from one character's head to another's with little or no warning or transition. I would find myself befuddled when an inner dialogue that I was following with interest suddenly made no sense to me. Then I would realize that I was no longer show more inside the head I thought I was in. Once I learned to watch for these abrupt head trips I started to really enjoy this novel.

The main character is Julien Sorel, a peasant son of the owner of a small town's saw mill. Julien was abused by his father and brothers, intellectually gifted, socially unsophisticated, naive about relationships/love, vane, amoral, and incredibly ambitious. The rigid class structure of the time conspired against any chance of him fulfilling his ambitions. Normally I would feel compelled to cut someone like Julien some slack (after all, the deck was so stacked against him) but I couldn't muster much sympathy for him. Julien was vane and selfish. His conscience was rarely troubled by hurting others, or even by putting those that love him in danger. He embraced hypocrisy as a practical method of advancement in career and in relationships. Everything was only, and always, about Julien.

The other main characters were the two women in Julien's life, Madame de Rênal & Mathilde de la Mole. They were both willing to sacrifice everything for Julien. Joining these women in their emotional rollercoaster rides of "I love him/I loathe him" and "stay with me/leave me" was exhausting. Mathilde, especially, could run through the full gamut of emotions in a matter of minutes. I sympathized more with Madame de Rênal, who at least struggled with the ramifications of her choices (she was a married woman with children, he was studying for the priesthood). Mathilde garnered a little sympathy from me because of her tender age. But even if maturity might eventually draw down drama level a bit, it would probably reinforce her haughty sense of social superiority.

Subtexts of the novel were indictments of the post-Napoleon aristocratic society and a mostly corrupt church.

This is a meaty book that is much more than a coming of age story of a complicated protagonist. show less

Another barn burning classic of French literature! There is so much to enjoy here, but the challenge is figuring out Stendhal's attitude towards Julien. The over the top melodrama of the ending makes it even more ambiguous.

It would be easy to read this as a straight up cautionary tale, with Julien as the noble figure whose overriding passions and ambitions lead to his downfall. However, there is so much sly commentary on the Church, Bonapartism, and the post Napoleonic aristocracy, that I can't escape the feeling that Stendhal has larger point to make about French society. Julien could be read as a Napoleon type figure whose erratic actions belie a great mind.

I really enjoyed the description of Julien's time in the seminary, show more especially his condescending description of his peers, whose happiness is based solely on the satisfaction of their stomachs. show less