The
Red and the Black by Stendahl - Henri Beyle - 1783 – 1842 is a disturbing novel, set in post Napoleonic France in 1831, it liberates the imagination. This novel, written in the present tense, is uncomfortably topical in its depiction of French contemporary society. Julien Sorel, son of a poor carpenter encounters Valenod’s workhouse, M.de Renal (Mme de Renal falls in love with Julien Sorel, her children’s Latin tutor) and Valenod swap political parties for opportunistic convenience, three Catholic priests prove honourable amongst the vapid youth of Restoration Paris, Croisenois is
man enough to defend Mathilde’s (Sorel’s amour) honour. Sorel’s native town is industrialised, tasteless new money tries to imitate the old order. Regimes may come and go but cant and conventionality still rule. Stendahl’s character Julien Sorel was personally involved in the issues of his day, he is firmly embedded in total reality. The novel relates how a carpenter’s son
attempts to murder his ex-mistress, the mayor’s wife, during the Catholic Mass. This was quite implausible, however the topical cases of two murderers, who met quite different fates, were sufficient for Stendahl to incorporate them into the
plot of the novel. The plot concentrated on how the energy and strength of purpose once evinced by Napoleon were now to be found only amongst the working classes, people with an unsheltered existence. Julien Sorel set out to conquer the society of his time by playing it at its own game of hypocrisy while yet remaining free from moral taint by virtue of his own lucidity. The Red and the Black was itself a revolution. The unpredictability of its plot creates the very excitement and imaginative zestfulness which is absent from the world it describes. Mme de Renal’s confession letter is so at variance with Julien’s character that he attempts to destroy this distorted image, the last thing one would expect a falsely pious hypocrite to do. Energy, curiosity and exploration are as important as trusting reciprocated love. Julien is a man of destiny, fraught with intimations of premature mortality whose superiority is the cause of his downfall. Social standing is substituted with
classless adultery - turning the life of a peasant who attempts murder during Mass into self sacrifice. Everything about man is a prediction.
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