The Red and the Black - Le Rouge et le Noir - Julien Sorel

Story of the novel “The Red and the Black” originated from an article related to a death penalty case from a newspaper at Feb 29, 1828.  During the Napoleonic Empire era, the red and the black mean the “military” and the “church” respectively.   Those are the two ways for the ambitious French young men to walk on.

This novel is ahead of its time.  “The Red and the Black” is one of the founders of European realism work.  The novel focuses on the protagonist Julien Sorel’s personal struggle and ultimate failure, especially the description toward his love and romance life.  It displayed the successive governments, the nobilities, the darkness of the church, and despicable upstarts.  Even though the story focuses on the love stories of Julien, after all, it is still a “political fiction”.

Stendhal is a literary master at display major social problems via romance and love.  Julien’s two love stories are connected with the related situation closely.  It is a display of the conflict with different classes.  Even though he formed true feelings of love toward Monsieur de Rênal’s wife, but at the beginning, it was only because of the vengeful feelings toward the rich and the powerful.  That’s why when Julien first possessed her; it was not the feeling of love, but the ambitious successful feeling of Napoleon, the “carnival joy”.

If we say Julien’s pursuit toward Monsieur de Rênal’s wife has some sincere emotions, then Julien’s pursuit toward Mathilde de la Mole is purely of political reasons.  Mathilde is not only an arrogant and aristocratic girl of the nobility, but only affected by the French Revolution heavily.  She believed that with another revolution, the one dominates the society will be youth like Julien. So a marriage with Julien is not only filled with romantic but also a powerful patron.  And on the other hand, Julien believes the marriage will bring him to higher power and decides to cheat her love.

However, Julien failed, because the situation at that moment was still controlled by the feudal government and class.  Julien is not in that circle of people; and those people would never allow someone like Julien to achieve his aspiration.

“The Red and the Black” exceeded in creating typical characters in typical environments, the balanced art structure and “drawing” technique.  And the reason critics called Stendhal “ the father of modern novel” is his outstanding skill and describe the psychological of his characters.  Realism authors stress upon having realistic details, but Stendhal is different from Balzac.  He focused on the detail and realistic psychological parts, instead of the physical surroundings.  The author often used one or two sentences to expand people’s action and surroundings, and uses pages after pages to describe the mental part.  As an example, the author used 3 pages for Julien noticing Madame de Rênal’s letter and killing her with a gun, but described the love with Mathilde with hundreds of pages of detailed texts.  In addition, Madame de Rênal’s mixed feeling of joy, pan, repentance yet unwilling to give up the love toward Julien demonstrated the great skills of Stendhal.