| The Red and the Black | |
1964 Flammarion edition |
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| Author | Stendhal (Henri Beyle) |
|---|---|
| Original title | 'Le Rouge et le Noir' |
| Country | France |
| Language | French |
| Genre(s) | Psychological novel, Bildungsroman |
| Publisher | A. Levavasseur |
| Publication date | November 1830 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 2 vol. |
| ISBN | NA |
Le Rouge et le Noir (The Red and the Black) is a novel by Stendhal, published in 1830. The title has been translated into English variously as Scarlet and Black, Red and Black, and The Red and the Black. It is set in 1830, and relates a young man's attempts to rise above his plebeian birth through a combination of talent, hard work, deception and hypocrisy, only to find himself betrayed by his own passions.
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Like Stendhal's later novel The Charterhouse of Parma (La Chartreuse de Parme), Le Rouge et le Noir is a Bildungsroman. The protagonist, Julien Sorel, is a driven and intelligent man, but equally fails to understand much about the ways of the world he sets out to conquer. He harbours many romantic illusions, and becomes little more than a pawn in the political machinations of the influential and ruthless people who surround him. Stendhal uses his flawed hero to satirize French society of the time, particularly the hypocrisy and materialism of its aristocracy and the Roman Catholic Church, and to foretell a radical change in French society that will remove both of those forces from their positions of power.
The most common and most likely explanation of the title is that red and black are the contrasting colors of the army uniform of the times and of the robes of priests, respectively. Julien Sorel observes early on in the novel that, under the Bourbon restoration it is impossible for a man of his class to distinguish himself in the army (as he might have done under Napoleon); now, only a career in the Church offers social advancement and glory. Alternative explanations are possible, however: for example, red might stand for love and black for death and mourning; or the colours might refer to those of a roulette wheel, and may indicate the unexpected changes in the hero's career.
The novel ends with Stendhal's standard closing quote, "To the Happy Few." This is often interpreted as a dedication to the few who could understand his writing, an allusion to William Shakespeare's "Henry V", or a sardonic reference to the happy few who are born into prosperity (the latter interpretation is supported by the likely source of the quotation, Canto 11 of Byron's Don Juan, a frequent reference in the novel, which refers to 'the thousand happy few' who enjoy high society). This is also interpreted as the happy few who live according to Stendhal's ideals (Beylisme): The goal of existence is to reach your personal happiness. All actions undertook to reach this are permissible, hence Julien's treatment of people. The most important virtue is "la force d'ame" or the force of the soul. This involves courage, resolution and moral energy.
The Red and the Black is the story of Julien Sorel, the ambitious son of a carpenter in the fictional French village of Verrières.
The novel comprises two volumes, each of which contains two major stories. The first book introduces Julien Sorel, who would rather spend his time reading or daydreaming about the "glory days" of Napoleon's army (long-since disbanded) than work in his father's timber yard alongside his brothers, who beat him for his intellectual affectation. Julien Sorel ends up becoming an acolyte of the local Catholic prelate, who later secures him a post as tutor for the children of the mayor of Verrières, Monsieur de Renal.
Sorel, who appears to be a pious and austere cleric, in reality has little interest in the Bible beyond its literary value and the way he can use memorized passages to impress important people (passages which he has moreover learned in Latin, and of whose meaning he has only an imperfect grasp).
Sorel begins an affair with the wife of Monsieur de Renal, one that ends badly when the affair is exposed throughout the town by her chambermaid, Elisa, who had designs of her own on Sorel. Monsieur de Renal then banishes Sorel, who moves on to a seminary in Besanc,on, which he finds cliquish and stifling. Despite his initial cynicism, the director of the seminary, l'abbe Pirard, (a Jansenist and thus a hated figure for the more powerful Jesuit faction in the diocese), takes a liking to Sorel and becomes his protector. When l'abbe Pirard leaves the seminary in disgust at the political machinations of the church hierarchy, he rescues Sorel from the persecution he would suffer in Pirard's absence, recommending him as private secretary to the diplomat and aristocratic Roman Catholic legitimist, the Marquis de la Mole.
Book II, which begins at the time just before the July Revolution, chronicles Sorel's life in Paris with the family of Monsieur de la Mole. Sorel finds himself caught up in the high society of Paris, but the friends of his employer's family, while noting his talents, look down on his lack of finesse and despise his plebian origins. Sorel, boundlessly ambitious to rise in the world, has the clear-sightedness to note the materialism and hypocrisy of the Parisian elite, though he sees also that the times make it impossible for well-born men with superior qualities to find an outlet in public affairs.
In an exhilarating episode, Monsieur de la Mole sends him on a dangerous mission to England, where he is to relay to an unidentified addressee a political letter that he has learned by heart. Distracted by an unhappy love affair, Sorel learns the message by rote, but fails to appreciate its significance. It is in fact part of a legitimist plot, and the addressee is presumably an ally of the Duc d'Angouleme, then in exile in England. Sorel thus risks his life to serve that faction which he most opposes. Sorel justifies this to himself by thinking only in helping Monsieur de la Mole, his employer and a man he respects.
Mathilde de la Mole, the bored daughter of Sorel's employer, had over the preceding months come to be torn between her growing interest in Sorel for his admirable personal qualities and her repugnance at becoming involved with a man of his class. He finds her unattractive at first, but his interest is piqued by her attentions and the admiration she inspires in others. She seduces and rejects Sorel twice, leading him into a miasma of happiness, pride at having outdistanced her aristocratic suitors, despair, and self-doubt. It is only on the diplomatic mission that the inexperienced Sorel gains the key to her affections with a cynical game-plan offered him by a man-of-the-world Russian prince. Following these instructions at great emotional cost, he feigns disinterest in her and provokes her jealousy by using a sheaf of pre-written love-letters to woo a widow in the family's social circle.
Mathilde de la Mole falls sincerely in love with Sorel, and eventually reveals she is pregnant with his child. In the period immediately before Sorel's return to Paris from the mission, she had become officially engaged to one of her many suitors, Monsieur de Croisenois, an amiable young man, rich, and set to inherit a dukedom.
Monsieur de la Mole is livid at the news of the liaison, but begins to relent in the face of his daughter's determination and his real affection for Sorel. He grants Sorel a property that brings him an income and an aristocratic title, and a place in the army. He appears ready to bless a marriage between the two, but has a dramatic change of heart when he receives the answer to a letter of character inquiry at Sorel's last employer, in Verrières. The letter, written by Madame de Renal at the urging of her confessor, warns him that Sorel is nothing but a cad and a social climber who preys on vulnerable women. The personal drama in these chapters is interwoven with a dissection of the role of money and class in contemporary French society.
Upon learning of Monsieur de la Mole's subsequent decision never to bless a marriage, Sorel rushes to Verrières and shoots his former lover during Mass in the town church. She survives, but the final chapters of the book follow the path of his conviction and execution for the crime.
Despite the tireless efforts to save his life by Mademoiselle de la Mole, Madame de Renal, and the ecclesiastics devoted to him since his early years, Sorel is determined to die; there is no place in contemporary French society for a superior man born without the advantages of money and social connections, and his bridges have been burned.
Monsieur de Croisenois, presented as the most appealing of the young men blessed by fortune, is killed in a duel over a slur on the honor of Mademoiselle de la Mole.
Mademoiselle de la Mole's affection for Sorel remains undiminished, but its intellectual and imperious nature, and its component of romantic exhibitionism, make her visits a duty for him.
Once Sorel learns that he has not killed Madame de Renal, he returns to his unnuanced love for her, which had remained in the back of his mind throughout his time in Paris and his passion for Mademoiselle de la Mole. She comes to visit him regularly in his last days, and dies of grief after he is beheaded. Mademoiselle de la Mole reenacts the cherished tale of 16th-Century queen Margot of France's visiting the body of her dead lover, Boniface de la Mole, to kiss the lips of his severed head. The 19th-Century Mathilde de la Mole carries the head of Julian Sorel to its tomb and turns his burial site into a shrine after the Italian fashion.
Le Rouge et le Noir is in one sense a novel of its time. The plot unfolds against the historical background of the later years of the Bourbon Restoration and the events of 27, 28 and 29 July 1830 which led to the July Monarchy. The plot is motivated by tensions between Julien Sorel's own Republican tendencies-in particular his nostalgic allegiance to Napoleon-and the schemes of the Catholic aristocrat legitimists, notably the Marquess de la Mole, and their Jesuit supporters, who represent the opposite political extreme, yet whose interests Julien ends up serving. While this historical context is treated highly allusively by Stendhal (who takes for granted his reader's familiarity with the politics of France at the time), he nevertheless considered it important enough to subtitle the novel "Chronique de 1830" ("Chronicle of 1830"; the subtitle is not reproduced in all editions). Readers who wish to read a less guarded treatment of these historical themes should see Stendhal's unfinished novel Lucien Leuwen (published posthumously but written 1834-35), which offers a clearer expose of the political tensions of the time.
The major theme of the novel is, on the other hand, timeless. Le Rouge repeatedly questions the possibility, and even the desirability, of sincerity: most of the characters and particularly Julien are acutely aware of the need to play a particular role in order to gain the approval of those around them (although they are not always successful). The word "hypocrisy" recurs in this context, and while the meaning of this term was more limited in nineteenth-century France than it is today (it referred specifically to the affectation of high religious sentiments, as any nineteenth-century dictionary will attest), it can nevertheless be understood as the key word in a novel where the characters' words and their inner thoughts are frequently at odds.
In his book Deceit, Desire and the Novel (Mensonge romantique et verite romanesque, 1961), the critic and philosopher Rene Girard identifies another key thematic structure in Le Rouge et le Noir, which he dubs triangular or "mimetic" desire. On Girard's showing, Stendhal's novel reveals how any individual's desire for another is always "mediated" by a third party-put crudely, that we desire something (or someone) because we see that someone else desires that thing. This theory attempts to account not only for the apparent perversity of Mathilde's and Julien's relationship, in particular the episode in which Julien begins a courtship of Mme de Fervaques to pique Mathilde's jealousy, but equally Julien's fascination with and aspirations to the high society he longs to despise.
Most of the chapters begin with epigraphs that appear to be quotes from literature, poetry, or notable historical individuals. In reality, Stendhal himself wrote the majority of these epigraphs, but attributed them to writers whom he thought capable of writing or saying such things. Stendhal left the last four chapters untitled; these are also the only four chapters that lack epigraphs.
André Gide felt that The Red and the Black was a novel far ahead of its time, and called it a novel for readers in the 20th century. At the time Stendhal wrote The Red and the Black, the prose in novels included dialogue or omniscient descriptions, but Stendhal's great contribution was to spend much of the novel inside the characters' heads, describing their feelings and emotions and even their inner conversations. As a result of this book, Stendhal is considered the inventor of the psychological novel.
In Jean-Paul Sartre's 1948 play Les Mains Sales, the protagonist Hugo suggests several pseudonyms for himself, including Julien Sorel, with whom he shares many similarities.
A film was made of the novel in 1954, directed by Claude Autant-Lara. It starred Gerard Philipe and Danielle Darrieux.
A BBC TV mini-series, The Scarlet and the Black, was made in 1993, starring Ewan McGregor, Rachel Weisz and Stratford Johns as the Abbe Pirard. An interesting addition to the plot was the spirit of Napoleon (Christopher Fulford) who advises Sorel (McGregor) through his rise and fall.
A made-for-TV film version of the novel was made in 1997 by Koch Lorber Films, starring Kim Rossi Stuart and Carole Bouquet and directed by Jean-Daniel Verhaeghe.