|
|
|
| Current Issue |
|
|
| Resources |
|
|
|
Stendhal's The Red and the Black: Existential Psychology in a World-Class Novel
| Article
# : |
19261 |
|
|
Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
|
| Issue
Date : |
7 / 1991 |
5,577 Words |
| Author
: |
Jesse Bier
Jesse Bier is professor of English at the University of
Montana in Missoula. |
The main plot of The Red and the Black is deceptively simple. After the fall of Napoleon a young man, Julien Sorel, becomes the tutor of Mayor Renal's children and enters into a passionate love affair with their mother, his senior by many years. Eventually their affair is exposed and Julien leaves for a seminary, where he befriends the Abbe Pirard. This estimable man loses his job because he has supported the marquis de la Mole against the local bishop, but he is then well placed in Paris by the marquis, who also hires Julien as his secretary. Before Julien leaves for the capital, he resumes his affair with Mme. de Renal, whose newfound and guilt-laden devoutness is not sufficient proof against him or herself.
In Paris, the intelligent and conscientious young man becomes a trusted lieutenant to the marquis and an intimate of the family, whose proud daughter, Mathilde, falls in love with him despite herself. But they are as much at war as in love with one another, chiefly on class grounds. In time, Julien makes her jealous, whereupon she succumbs completely. She also becomes pregnant. Her father's solution is to elevate his prospective son-in-law, giving him a small fortune and procuring both a title and an army commission for him.
At this juncture the marquis receives a letter from Mme. de Renal, relapsed into her compensatory religious ardor, revealing Julien's past with her. Infuriated, the marquis denounces Julien and prevents the marriage. In a rage of defeat and torment Julien travels back to provincial Verrieres, where he finds Mme. de Renal in church and fires upon her. Although he misses, the homicidal intent is taken for the deed, according to the law of the time, and Julien is sentenced to die.
Both women remain in love with him: Mathilde even tries to bribe the jury; and Mme. de Renal, her love helplessly reawakened by Julien's murderous but passionate reflex, begs him to appeal his sentence. He does not do so and, feeling complete again in their love, goes to his death. Mathilde, acting out a macabre family legend, buries Julien's severed head with her own hands. Mme. de Renal, for her own unceremonious part, dies three days later.
What is deceptive in the book is that none of the action is merely melodramatic. At every point throughout the work there is clever and powerful rationalization for the romantic vision of life. Although Stendhal seems to agree with Freud about the general principles of human action and feeling--the primacy of early experience, the overwhelming importance of the libido, and the
...
Read Full Article
Look for this article in Ask.com
|
|
