Lecture on Stendhal

8/6/2019 Lecture on Stendhal

1/27

Lecture on Stendhal's The Red and the Black[The following document is the text of a lecture delivered, in part, by Ian

Johnston, in LBST 410. This text in the public domain, released June 1999]

For comments or questions, please contactIan

Johnston

A. Introductory NoteIn this lecture I would like to address two mainquestions: first, I want to look once again at the termRomantic, especially as it applies to works of prose

fiction, and then, in the light of that discussion I wouldlike to consider the extent to which we can call thisnovel, the Red and Black, a Romantic work and, if so,how that might illuminate some things in the novel,particularly the life and career of the central character,Julien Sorel, and what vision of the Romantic life isfinally given to us.B. Romantic as a Literary Term: Structureand StyleWhen we apply the term Romantic to a work of art,typically we might mean one of three distinct butrelated features of it: the vision of life embodied in thework, the style of the writing or painting, and finally thestructure of the narrative or pictorial details. I wish tofocus initially on the last two: the style and thestructure (which are obviously very closely relatedterms), and then turn my attention to how these mightbe said to embody a Romantic vision of experience.This is a complex topic, and my intention here is only toraise two or three important questions which occur in allfictions but particularly with ones from the Romanticperiod and afterwards.Now, we have already discussed briefly that oneimportant feature of the Romantic aesthetic was toexperiment with new forms, new structures, especiallythose which challenged the reader's traditionalexpectations. This necessarily involves putting thereader into something of a new relationship with the

work of art. And many Romantic works do this quitedeliberately with a clear purpose in view: the artist
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]


2/27

wants to provide for the reader an importantinterpretative challenge, to involve the reader or viewerin the often complex business of sorting out just whatthe work of art has to say and to do this in a way thatrequires the reader or viewer to abandon or rethink

traditional ways of dealing with such works of art.An important element of Romanticism, in other words, isto create a work of art as a dynamic process in whichthe reader or viewer or listener is actively involved innew and unexpected ways, rather than to present thereader or viewer or listener with something which hassuch a clear sense of given meaning that the reader orviewer is, in a sense, more the recipient of an achievedvision than a working partner in a discovery of meaning.

Here an analogy may help. Classical Art, it has beenobserved, is like a privileged picture onto an orderedscene--it is a vision for the viewer or reader ofsomething in which the values are inherent and we areinvited to inspect the scene from an objective distanceand recognize the artist's vision, the controlling hand ofthe creator of the work. Because the work will bepresented to us in a form and structure with which weare probably familiar (a traditional convention), we arenot invited to redefine our relationship to the work:

instead we are from our privileged position toappreciate the "mirror of nature" that it represents.Romantic art, on the other hand, is often an invitation tojoin the picture, to enter into its ambiguities and thus toparticipate in the creation of an ordered meaning,which, without such an active participation on the partof the viewer or the reader is simply not there. Or,alternatively put, a Romantic style and structure willoften exert considerable pressure on the viewer orreader to recognize and accept the need for a

discovered meaning, available only in the imaginationof the reader or viewer who is willing to enter the worldof the work of art more closely and dynamically. Thework of art, in itself, is not going to provide a clearmeaning without the personal imaginative interaction ofthe individual viewer.C. Romanticism in Styles of ArtFor instance, when Lisa McLeod showed us various

eighteenth and nineteenth century paintings, I thinkmost of recognized an important feature of those works,


3/27

usually called Classical, in which we were given a lookat a stable and ordered scene. What was going onmight be quite dramatic, as in the Oath of the Horatii,but it occurs in a solid world of firm buildings, anarranged landscape controlled by the laws of

perspective, and a proper regard to the social values ofvarious positionings and proportions. To appreciate thepicture is to recognize the values inherent in the givenorder of the work. To the extent that we can recognizeand share those traditional symbols of meaning, we canunderstand the picture without too much difficulty.With some of Turner's later work, however, as withsome of the Romantic paintings which Lisa discussed,this firm sense of order in the world of the picture is notso clear. Often, as we saw in Turner, the emphasis is onthe dynamic movement upon which whatever lookssolid (like a ship) might rest. In such paintings theforeground is often unreliable: we are not sure of ourfooting, of our position as viewer. Often in thesepaintings the background is indistinct or else a formalarrangement of colour in usually very dramatic shapes(vortexes, intersecting straight lines, loops, swirls, andso on) without any attempt to depict a naturalisticperspective and with little firmness of outline. In someof the paintings, the dynamic shapes and colours so

dominate the picture that we have no clear sense ofanything naturalistically ordered for us to view, and wecan even argue about what we imagine is depictedthere.This Romantic style in painting, therefore, oftenchallenges the viewer in unexpected ways, withoutappealing to traditional structures or forms or images.We are not so sure where we stand in relation to what isdepicted because we are not so sure any more that weshare with the artist or with other viewers a common

sense of what the picture represents or how we aresupposed to interpret the dynamic uncertainty.What I am trying to stress here is that in such paintings,we can talk of the style and the structure beingRomantic in the sense that they do not rely upon anytraditional convention or shared experience which isgoing to assist the viewer. The interpretation is thusgoing to be a much more radically personal challenge toeach viewer. Of course, one may decline the invitationand declare the painting, as many did and still do,incomprehensible or mad; but if we accept thatinvitation, then we are going to be thrown back on our


4/27

own imaginations in a way that is remarkably differentfrom how we react to Classical Art.D. Romanticism in Styles of MusicTo some extent we can see the same thing happeningas we move from Mozart to Beethoven. Many of youhave attested to the sense you get in Mozart of acontrolling order, a firm sense of traditional structurebeyond which the music does not stray (and someprefer that, and others don't). As one critic hasobserved: "In Mozart we get the pleasure ofcontinuously fulfilled expectation." The enormousgenius of Mozart lies in how he can play within thisstructure--not surprising us with anything beyond theworld he has set and yet constantly delighting andsurprising us with the amazing inventiveness of hismusic within the given sense of order and structure.Now, of course, in Beethoven the sense of order is alsovery strong. To that extent, Beethoven is still very muchin the Classical world of Mozart. And yet it's clear thatthere is an important Romantic element as well, for withBeethoven we are never quite certain of what's going tohappen next: the dynamics of the orchestra isundercutting our sense of a secure form (just as

Turner's use of colour and shape undercuts our sense ofa secure form of order in the world depicted in many ofhis paintings). The constant shifting from loud to soft, topianissimo, to crescendo, from strings to reeds to hornsto percussion, the frequent use of the fermata, whichbrings the whole piece temporarily to a stop, withoutany firm sense of what's going to happen next, and soon, all these introduce into that reassuring Classicalorder a note of dynamic uncertainty and, once again,there is no easily shared way we can interpret suchwork. In much of the Fifth Symphony, perhaps until the

final movement, we are always in some uncertainty aswhere we are going next--rhythmically, melodically, interms of volume, instrumentally, and so on.

Thus, how we arrive at a unified sense of Beethoven'sFifth Symphonyis a very different process ofunderstanding from dealing with, say, Handel's Messiah,where at any particular moment, the mood that hasbeen established for that part of the work is not goingto shift abruptly in challenging and unexpected ways.

This sense of continuing and shared order, of course, isone of the main sources of the lasting appeal of the


5/27

Classical and Baroque works; just as the invigoratingsense of dynamic surprise, tension, anxiety, andambiguity is one of the main sources of the lastingappeal of Romantic Music. Those of you who are goingon to study Wagner in the Enquiry Seminar will, no

doubt, be exploring much more of those Romanticqualities in a composer who often makes Beethovensound positively predictable.E. Romantic Style in Prose Narrative: theUse of an Unreliable NarratorNow, the same processes I have describing in music andart occur in fiction, as we move from the traditionalways of telling stories to more Romantic notions of

structure and style. And once again, the effects of thechanges are often to put considerable pressure on thereader to recognize that this story has no unambiguousmeaning, no given sense of shared order--there is oftenno one in the story to assist us in our task ofinterpreting the significance of what is going on. Toachieve that we may have to enter the work in newways.One important technique in Romantic prose whichachieves this effect of throwing onto the reader a more

active role in the interpretative process is the use of aspecial sort of narrator. And from here on, with theRomantic and post-Romantic style, we need to startpaying careful attention to the narrator and to evaluatejust how the presence of that figure is related to ourresponses to the fiction. So I'd like to offer a fewreflections on that problem.If we begin by saying that any story gives the reader animagined reality, an invitation to enter a made up wordwhere people with whom the reader can makeimaginative connections act in various ways, then wecan usefully discuss an important question: What is ourentry into the story and how reliable is that? How is thenarrator related to the story? And how is that narratoraffecting my response?In Homer, for example, we had an omniscient, reliablenarrator. He didn't take sides, guided us expertlythrough various scenes, generally without editorializingtoo much. We are getting, we feel, a reliable take on the

story. We do not have to question the narrator, becausewe have no occasion to doubt his veracity or his


6/27

judgment. What he says about a particular scene orperson seems to match closely with our own reactions.And in Dante we are inclined always to accept thenarrator's reactions as genuine and authoritative: how

he reacts to a particular sight is, we feel, theappropriate way to react to that sight. He has us by thehand, and we soon learn to trust his observations andhis reactions to those observations. There is not, inother words, any important disparity between hisreactions and our reactions to the same images.The same is largely true in Gulliver's Travels, whereSwift goes to some length to establish the reliability ofGulliver's observations and his sensibilities, to make usfamiliar with his credentials as a keen, reliable observer,not prone to exaggeration or panic or overimaginativeinterpretations. And so, in Gulliver's Travels we tend toaccept Gulliver as a reliable informant andcommentator on what he presents for us to consider. Ofcourse, he undergoes some dramatic changes; in fact,the change in the narrator is clearly the main event ofthe book. But the structure of the narrative does notthrow any extra responsibility on us to enter the worldhe is describing, because we can take his word for it(except, according to some critics, until near the end,

and it's interesting that such reservations are acomparatively modern phenomenon, something whichdid not arise for Swift's contemporaries).Now, in Romantic fictions, by contrast, the narrators areoften unreliable, and we cannot accept theirinterpretation of what is going on unreservedly. We getthe facts of the story, but we recognize that the eventswhich the narrator is telling us are beyond thenarrator's understanding or that the explanations thenarrator offers for what he or she is seeing are not

sufficient to explain the events to our satisfaction. Inother words, to make sense of the story, we have torecognize that we are on our own; the narrator willprovide the details, but his or her ignorance about theirsignificance puts all the more pressure on us torecognize the complexity of what is going on and toaccept the challenge of understanding it. That challengeincludes, most importantly, evaluating the narrator.In many Romantic and post-Romantic novels, thisdifficulty is compounded by having three or fourdifferent narrators, so that we are getting the story fromthree or four different perspectives simultaneously or


7/27

else the story is reaching us through the filters ofdifferent narrators. For instance, in Wuthering Heights,we are often getting the information that someone toldNelly Dean, that she has passed on to Lockwood, andthat he is now passing to us. And it is clear that neither

Nelly Dean nor Lockwood really understands thesignificance of the details they are talking about. Sincenone of the narrators has a fully adequate explanationfor any of the events they relate, the reader has theadded task of evaluating the sources of the informationas well as the information itself.Any of you who have studied Heart of Darkness will bevery familiar with this technique of having a story toldby a narrator about another narrator who is alwayscalling attention to his inability to understand the storyhe is relating.And in modern times this structural process ofchallenging the reader by complex narratorrelationships has often been exploited. Some famousexamples are theAlexandrian Quartetby LawrenceDurrell, Faulkner's novelAbsolom, Absolom, and bestknown of all perhaps, the Kurosawa movie Rashomon.In these fictions the same tale is given to the readerrepeatedly, but each time by a different narrator. And

each narrative emerges as a very different version ofthe same events. What, such a technique seems to besaying, is the truth of it? The reader is left to his or herown devices.(I should add that exploiting the narrator this way is notthe only method of challenging the reader. Playingaround with the chronology is another--WutheringHeights being a good example here. And in recent timesthe attempt to place more and more responsibility onthe reader for interpreting the fiction has led to books in

which the reader has to arrange the pages in aparticular order. How you read the work depends uponthe shape you give it. Speaking generally, we can seesuch structural innovations as manifestations of theconstant Romantic and post-Romantic urge to breakfree of traditional standards and structures, always toprovide a new relationship between the book and thereader. Ultimately, of course, such an urge leads toabsurdity, when the truest Romantic work is onewithout any given structure: the purest and mostauthentic music is silence, the truest poem is the blankpage, and so on. In such works, the artist has finallyemancipated the work fully from all inherited structures,


8/27

and the weight of interpretation is fully on theimagination of the individual reader or listener).This problem of evaluating the narrator is notparticularly a problem inJane Eyre. In that sense,

although the vision of life in the novel is quite Romantic,the style of the narrative is for the most part quitetraditional. Early in the novel Jane establishes that sheis giving us the facts, and there is no sense that she isnot an honest and perceptive teller of her own story. Forvirtually all the novel we are not encouraged toquestion her judgment about what went on or about thedifferent characters. So, in that sense, there's nothingparticularly Romantic about the structure ofJane Eyre(the sources of the Romanticism in the novel comemore from the character of the heroine and theconcentration on and treatment of natural imagery,among other things).F. Stendhal's Red and BlackBut when we get to The Red and the Black, we arefaced with a much more teasing and complex issue.Who is telling us this story? And how reliable is he? Howare we supposed to take his many editorial asides onsociety and particular characters? And how does that

shape our response to the story?We note very early on in the story that the narratorlikes to make judgments about the story he is telling. Inthe opening pages, as we move from the outskirts oftown into Verrieres, the narrator, not satisfied withletting us make up our own minds about the town,provides this comment:

As a matter of fact, these folk wield themost wearisome despotism: and this is why,

for anyone who has lived in the greatrepublic called Paris, life in the provinces isinsupportable. The tyranny of publicopinion--and what an opinion--is as stupid inthe small towns of France as it is in theUnited States of America. (4)

Here we discover that we are in the presence of a veryparticular personality, who sounds somewhat a snobfrom Paris, who has made up his mind quickly and

easily about life in the provinces and in America. Thereal edge of supercilious urbanity in the tone alerts us


9/27

to the fact that this man is a social sophisticate, aParisian, conscious of his great superiority over thecreatures he is now to describe, in spite of the fact thathe is, as he informs us on the next page, a liberal. Thetone in which this story is told suggests a certain cynical

urbanity, an ironic playfulness, the tone of someonewho is going to tell us a story for his own amusementwithout any suggestion that it means very much toanyone.(I should stress at this point that we have no license toidentify the voice of the narrator with that of the author,and thus infer things about the author's character fromthe character of the narrator, or vice versa. It may bethe case that they two are very close indeed, perhapsidentical, but it might equally be true that the authorhas created a particular narrator quite different fromhimself in order to achieve certain effects within thefiction. So whether Stendhal was like the person I'mdescribing as I interpret the narrator is irrelevant)That suggests at the outset that this narrator is notnecessarily going to be particularly sympathetic to thecharacters in his story or very helpful to or candid withus, the readers, many of whom fit his description ofmiddle-class, small-town life. I get the sense of

someone who sees himself as a member of society butone who has already made up his mind about it and,conscious of his own social superiority, is quitecondescending to others, especially to his hero. Here,for example, is a comment he makes on Julien (on 37):

Let us not think too poorly of Julien's future;he was inventing with perfect correctness,the language of a sly and prudenthypocrisy. At his age, that's not bad. In thematter of tone and gestures, he lived

among yokels, and so had never studied thegreat models. Later, circumstancespermitted him to approach closer to finegentlemen; no sooner had he done so thanhe was as skilful with gestures as withwords. (37)

Now, it's a good rule in fiction to follow Lawrence'sadvice: "Trust the tale, not the teller." That is, make ourjudgments based upon what the character says anddoes rather than on any comments which the narratormay insert telling us how we should interpret thecharacter. Well, if that's the case, then why does


10/27

Stendhal keep insinuating the narrator's presence andopinions into the novel?I suggest that one main reason is to encourage us torecognize that the narrator doesn't really understand

Julien adequately or, if he does, he's not about to openup his heart to the readers about what Julien means tohim. At times it seems that he cannot make up his mindabout him. He often easily sums up his behaviour fromone moment to another, but such attempts, werecognize, are too facile, too contradictory, too at oddswith the complexity of Julien's behaviour to count asvalid interpretations.

Our hero simply lacked the audacity to besincere (74). . . . All the first actions of ourhero, who considered himself such apolitician, were, like his choice of aconfessor, acts of folly. Misled by thepresumption natural to an imaginative man,he mistook he inward intentions for outwardacts and considered himself a consummatehypocrite. His folly reached the height ofblaming himself for his supposed success inthis art of the weak (141). . . . Like allmediocre creatures who become involved

by accident in the maneuvers of a greatgeneral, Julien understood nothing of thestrategic assault launched by the youngRussian against the heart of his severeEnglishwoman (331). . . . In my opinion, thiswas one of the finest traits of his character;a man capable of imposing such restraint onhis own impulses may go far. . . . (342)

What is consistent about such comments, in spite of thefrequently inconsistent judgments, sometimes

approving, sometimes ridiculing, is the tone: superior,detached, urbane, and in some sense uncaring--as if heis recording the life cycle of a zoological specimen. Atmoments of intense drama, like the final success of aseduction or the death of Julien, the narrator will noteven supply us with the facts. He doesn't care to.There is also, and most importantly, a strong andrecurring note of ironic playfulness in the tone of thenarrator--not only is he playing somewhat in hisevaluations of Julien, but he is also playing with thereader, teasing us with odd judgments, sardonic asides,invitations to consider Julien as a hero or failure or both.


11/27

He gives us at times an odd rhythm to the narrative,spending a long time leading up to a key moment andthen skipping over the moment with a brief note that ithappened, and then spending a lot of time on theaftermath. Many of things we expect to read about do

not happen. Thus, however, we evaluate the narrator ofthe Red and Black, we are going to have to take intoaccount and watch for the constantly shifting tone,which is difficult to evaluate finally because there is sooften such a strongly ironic, playful note to it.The effect of this, I wish to suggest, is odd. For me, itestablishes the fact that I cannot rely upon the narratormuch to provide me with a sure-footed way through thestory, and I don't trust his response to the story he istelling. For me what is happening to Julien is somethingmuch sadder, much more complex, and much lessamusing than he seems to find it. And the discrepancybetween how I am reacting to the story and how thenarrator is reacting, I find, increases the pressure on meto come to grips with the full complexity of the issues.

Stendhal clearly did this quite deliberately, to take awayany firm certainty we might derive from a reliabletrustworthy likable guide like Dante or Gulliver. Bycreating a certain discrepancy between the narrator's

response to events and our own, Stendhal is creatinguncertainty in the mind of the reader as to how anyparticular event ought to be interpreted and, at thesame time, throwing the responsibility for suchinterpretation squarely onto the reader.Ultimately, then, for me, one of the main messages ofthis novel, to the extent that it has any message at all,is the inability of the narrator to pass any sort ofreasonable judgment on his story. Inasmuch as he isclearly a successful member of that society, an affluent

well educated Parisian, who finds nothing but a certainanecdotal amusement in the tale, I come to see wherethe source of the real problems in that society may lie--the detached urbanity of the civilized person whodoesn't care enough, a person for whom the sufferingshe relates are unconnected to him, except as anopportunity for many casual evaluative judgmentsdelivered from a detached and superior position, notthe vantage, as in Homer, of a sympathetic objectivity,but rather of a sheltered uncaring amusement. If we seethat one of the great issues this novel raises is theproblem of living an authentic life in modern society (as


12/27

I shall argue later), then I would propose that thenarrator himself is part of the problem.Now, I'm not expecting you necessarily to agree withme about the narrator in Red and Black, but one thing is

clear: we all as readers have to take him into account.We have to deal with his judgments and his evaluations.And, unlike the other fictions we have read in which wehave been guided by a narrator, here there are likely tobe disagreements about whether this narrator is reliableor not, whether we should like him or not, whether hissympathies lie with Julien or not, and so on. In otherwords, here there is a radical uncertainty about wherewe stand in relation to the work presented to us, just asin a Turner painting or in sections of Beethoven's Fifth.G. The Case of Julien SorelThat's all I want to say for the moment about theRomantic structure ofRed and Black(although there isone more important feature I'd like to get to in a while).I'd now like to turn to the second point of this lecture:the vision of Romanticism in Red and Black. How are weto evaluate that? I don't think anyone will have anydifficulty in recognizing certain qualities in Julien whichwe can identify as Romantic traits. However, we may

run into some arguments as to what this novel issaying, if anything, about the value of thosecharacteristics.You may remember that, in the Introduction toRomanticism lecture, which I delivered a few weeksago, I said that, in general, there were two commonforms of the story of the Romantic character as hero. Inone, the main character succeeds, even if onlytemporarily, in transforming the world into somethingthat does match his or her vision of it, so that the

Romantic imperative to achieve the self-created identityis satisfied.Jane Eyre is clearly a story of this sort: thenovel offers us a sense that Jane's attitude to life,particularly her spontaneous irrational sense of her ownworth and her resistance to anything which threatens todefine who she is in a manner which does not matchher conception of herself, that this attitude leads to aricher, more meaningful existence, particularly incomparison with those around her who take their senseof life from the society or the traditions.


13/27

The second form of the Romantic story I mentioned isthe less happy version, the one in which the Romanticspirit, full of a sense of the possibilities life may offer forheroic selfdefinition, is defeated, in which theimaginative powers are insufficient to overcome the

gross stupidity, conformity, hostility, and intractabilityof the social world outside the self or, alternatively, onein which the Romantic qualities are insufficiently strongto maintain themselves in such a world.

Julien as a Failed RomanticI would like initially to propose that The Red and theBlackoffers us such a story. Its hero, Julien Sorel, isclearly energized by what we can easily identify as aRomantic urge: he wishes to escape his past, toredefine himself in a more heroic mold, to live up to hisown standards of heroic conduct, without reference tothe world around him. And what fires him in this questis his passionate imagination of what he would like tobe. It is clear also that, in a very obvious sense, he fails.His life and death end up making no difference toanyone, least of all to the society around him. In anyassessment of Julien's story, of course, we have to takeinto account the ending, to sort out whether that offerssome important sense of a discovered value or whether

it is just one last ironic comment on the futility ofJulien's dreams, the last feeble illusion. But for themoment I'd like to consider everything else but theending, since we are going to be discussing that inseminars.Much of our response to the Red and Blackis going todepend on our evaluation of Julien's Romanticcharacter, and I suspect there's going to beconsiderably more argument about that character thanabout Jane Eyre's character. However, for what's it's

worth, I want to offer my reflections on Stendhal'spicture of his hero.Julien, I have observed, is, in many ways, obviously aRomantic character. He is a dreamer, filled with avisionary of sense of the life he would like to lead, a lifewhich has little to no relation to the situation in whichhe finds himself. He thus sets out to construct a life forhimself, one that will answer more satisfyingly to hisimaginative visions of himself. In this he is not unlikeJane Eyre. And he seems unlike many others in thesociety around him, who appear to be, in a veryunimaginative way, satisfied to pursue the dreary and


14/27

terminally boring lives defined almost to suffocation bythe society around them (whether in Verrieres or inParis).However, unlike Jane, I would claim, Julien lacks

something fundamental. I'm not sure what to call it, butfor want of a better term I'll use intelligence, by which Imean a certain intellectual, political, and emotionalperceptiveness, the ability to see, to feel, and to thinkone's way through complex situations with a certainclarity. He has considerable skills of one sort andanother, he has confidence and courage, a strongimagination, and a great deal of luck. All of these makehim, in a sense, special in a society where there isvirtually no imagination or courage. But the mainobjection I have to him is that he is very rarely anauthentic person, acting on his deepest feelingsspontaneously and effectively. And the main reason forthat is that he is in some fundamental way anunintelligent Romantic. And because of that lack ofintelligence his every action is extremely ambiguous--linked with contradictory motives, all sorts of hesitantself-reflections, and constant doubt.Thus, when I read this novel, I don't particularly admireJulien, but I constantly feel sorry for him. He is born into

a society which we are invited to see as confining,bourgeois, self-serving, and petty, a society which hasno room or place for a person of spirit, of sensitivity.The small town culture of Verrieres is a devastatingindictment of middle-class conventional morality, ruledby the tyranny of the majority and public opinion whichsees making money and achieving petty victories in theendless wars of social status as the highest priorities.The question the novel raises from the outset is this: Insuch a world, how can one live an authentic life?So we have no difficulty in recognizing Julien's potentialmerits and sympathizing with his desire to escape andto create a better, more meaningful life for himself. Thevery fact that he has such desires and is prepared to acton them makes him, as I say, in some sense preferableto almost everyone around him. And to that extent, Isuppose, we can admire something in him: his feelingsabout life are sufficiently strong to recognize thatentering conventional life in Verrieres is to choose noreal life at all ("Everything he saw there chilled hisimagination," p. 19). He must escape, and yet thesociety he is in offers little alternatives. The penaltiesfor not conforming are high.


15/27

And yet also right from the start we get a sense thatJulien's priorities are in some way badly skewed. Whilehis imaginative desire to live a greater life than anyoffered by Verrieres is understandable, it seems thatJulien is unwilling to form his own sense of what he

must do: instead he is going to take over an inheriteddream: the achievements of Napoleon. Before he evenstarts out on his quest for a new achieved identity, wealready know that, unlike Jane Eyre, he's not preparedto work that out for himself--he's in the grip of a visionproduced by other people's books.Then, too, there's the paradox of his attitude to society.For Julien is fiercely ambitious socially. He has alreadymade up his mind that, despicable as he finds hissociety, his goals are to rise up in that very society. Andin many respects his final failure to achieve what JaneEyre achieves is, I would maintain, linked directly to thefact that he sets himself inauthentic goals in the firstplace. The life that he sets about constructing forhimself is based upon an unintelligent appreciation ofhow, in seeking self-validation through social success,he is going inexorably to become captive to a falsevision--the ambition of being famous and rich, ratherthan being his own person.That's what I mean when I stress that I find Julien insome basic way unintelligent. Full of Romanticyearnings to be his own person, he succumbs to thefalse ideals of nostalgic visions of Napoleon and gettingon in high society--all as a means of compensating forhis overwhelming sense of social inferiority. That's themain reason that I can feel great pity for him, becausehis background is so problematic, and yet in some basicway despise him, because he has no really intelligentgrasp of what is at stake in constructing a valuable life.Yet this feature of Julien's Romanticism makes thisnovel in many ways much more complex anexamination of the Romantic spirit in modern society.Jane Eyre is, by contrast, a relatively uncomplicatedsoul, from an early age full of a natural courage, power,and confidence that she can take out into the world.She never doubts the values of the person she feelsherself to be, and we never doubt that that self-creationis something she has achieved on her own. But Julien'ssense of what he wants to become is not authenticallyself-generated--it's something he buys into, and itcompromises his attempt to achieve a fully Romanticlife.


16/27

Another way of saying the same thing is to claim thatJulien has many skills but no real talents. For instance,he is very skilled with language and owes a good deal ofhis early social success to his ability in Latin. But hiscommand of Latin is a trick of his memory; it doesn't

arise from love of the language or a real feeling forwhat the Latin Vulgate Bible contains (from hisawareness of any real value in the activity or abilityitself). Unlike Jane Eyre's art, for example, Julien's skillsare those of a mechanic who has no feeling at all forwhat people so admire in him. And the same is true withhis ability to act and to deceive people. For all the minorvictories he gains here and there, he takes no deeplypersonal joy in what he can do so well: his natural giftsare just something he discovers he can use to get whathe wants. And his little triumphs enable him to confirmhis hatred for everyone he sees all around him, ratherthan being joyful acknowledgments of his own person.What this amounts to, I think, is that Julien, unlike Jane,has no strongly creative sense of self, of what he wantsto be. He knows what he doesn't want to be, andwhatever will help him avoid that is all right for themoment. If being a priest will get him ahead, then whynot be a priest--it doesn't matter that he lacks any innerconviction of faith; being a tutor to young boys is all

right, even if at first he detests the boys. Working one'sway up a society which one despises is all right if it getsone further away from what he doesn't want.So it's no wonder that Julien becomes the perfecthypocrite--he doesn't care enough about anyone oranything in a sufficiently passionate way to make thatthe energizing force of his life. So he can hide what hefeels inside while he gets on with the business ofmanipulating his way up the social ladder. His couragein forcing social situations to his apparent advantage,

combined with his deceptively innocent exteriorappearance, enables him to enjoy all sorts of minorvictories which cumulatively lead to the seduction ofMme Renal and later to the advancement of his positionin the Hotel de la Mole.H. Hypocrisy and InteriorityThis matter of hypocrisy is obviously important. For inmuch of the novel we are trying to follow a conversation

between two people in which there are really severaldifferent selves involved. Julien presents a surface to


17/27

the world; but that is not his real self. In fact, he spendsmuch of his time trying to control, rearrange, and adapthis external appearance to fit the circumstances he isin. Underneath that surface there is the inner Julien,which is part heroic aspiration but also part the hesitant

doubter, constantly wondering about the relationship ofhis inner state to his external appearance, questioning,doubting, resolving, and so on. The dynamic life ofJulien is largely on the inside, but even that inner life isnot a stable certain basis for a personality. Rather it isengaged in constant unresolved dialogue with itself.Who, then, is the real Julien Sorel? Is it the surface man,whom so many people find interestingly different? Is itthe Romantic visionary, dreaming of a self-realizedNapoleonic grandeur? Is it the hesitant, adolescentdoubter, always questioning, always on guard against aworld it suspects is out to deceive, embarrass, anddemote him? And if all three come into play, what is therelationship between them? Where is the authenticJulien in all this dynamic ambiguity?His problem (and ours as readers) is compounded bythe fact that the person he is talking to is often doingthe same: concentrating on the most appropriaterelationship between an inner self and an outer

appearance. In the social world, the two surfaces aremaking contact, but neither inner person is altogethersure what that surface contact means.We might be tempted to call Julien a Machiavellianbecause of his constant preoccupation with suchhypocrisy: preparing a face to meet the faces that hemeets. And there's a good deal in that. However, unlikea conventional Machiavellian, there's no strong self-confidence under Julien's surface, no sense ofsuccessful self-assertiveness. In a sense, his hypocrisy

is as much a defense against having to reveal who hereally is to the people he despises as it is anything else.Certainly it doesn't serve a ruthless power-seeking ego(as it does in, say, Edmund in King Lear).In all of this there is a constant sense of how patheticJulien really is. His vision of himself as a conqueringhero in the Napoleonic mode translates itself intocomplex but endlessly hesitant, self-reflecting andunsatisfying love affairs which he describes to himself inmilitary language, a style which simply reminds us justhow unheroic these achievements are by comparison.And no matter what success he enjoys, he is constantly


18/27

plagued by self-reflection, self-doubts. Have I done theright thing in my campaign for advancement? Shall Ihold her hand? Maybe I should not have done that. If Ishow my feelings, will I lose the campaign? And so on.This is a very far cry from the confident romantic

assertiveness that we saw in Jane Eyre--psychologicallymuch more interesting, of course, but also far less of anaffirmation of the emotional rightness of that attitude.I. The Compromises of an Uncertain HeroGiven his compromised dreams for himself and thedubious methods Julien employs, it is not surprising thathe ends up hopelessly compromising himself--becominga servant of that very society which he so detests. Thisbecomes clear at the end of Chapter 7 (p. 225), whenJulien finds out that he has done a great injury tosomeone. He has used his position of influence at theHotel de la Mole to change a particular appointment(simply to amuse himself), and he has discovered that,thanks to him, now a destitute family will be withoutincome. At first he is stunned by his injustice, but hequickly rationalizes that moment away:

It's nothing important, he told himself, thereare plenty of other injustices which I will

have to commit if I'm to be successful; andwhat's more, I'll have to conceal them underlofty, sentimental words. Poor M. Gros! Hedeserved the cross; I have it, and I mustplay along with the government that gave itto me.

This is a minor incident, but it invites us to speculateabout what has happened to the young man whoimagined himself so different, so above the pettycompromises of the society, so much a radical spirit

that he kept a portrait of Napoleon under his bed. Wediscover here that Julien's social ambition is hopelesslycompromising his strong sense of Romantic value. Andhe has little trouble dealing with it, because he neverhad much of an intelligent sense of the differencebetween being authentically oneself and beingsuccessful in a very compromising society.Later on, of course, he even ends up playing a key rolein the reactionary treason which is going on, seeking to

promote a counter revolution which will put back intofull power the aristocracy and the priests--that is, to


19/27

undermine the revolutionary work of his hero,Napoleon. Julien understands clearly enough what is atstake here, but he raises no protest and carries out hisrole. This is not just a Romantic disregard for politicalquestions (although that might be a part of it); it is also

a betrayal of everything Julien himself claimed not solong ago to believe in. Thus, we recognize that hisidentity, his desire to be his own person, has been takenover--whatever truly imaginative sense he had of life'spossibilities has not been able to cope with his feelingsof social inadequacy, his social ambition, and thedelights of being a hypocrite.

J. Julien and InauthenticityThere is, in other words, something deeply inauthenticabout Julien. However much we may sympathize withhis desire to be something better than the people hefinds around him--both in Verrieres and in Paris--hisdesire for fame and status propels into conduct whichviolates those sources of himself which might put himfully in touch with what he really is. Because he is notsecure enough about who he really is or might be, heserves false gods, and before the end we can say ofhim, as we can say of so many failed Romantics,including most rock 'n' roll singers "He got what he

wanted, but he lost what he had."For Julien clearly has within him some germ of a muchnobler possibility than the one he chooses to follow. Wesee this early in the novel in a number of places. Thereis, first, his ability to interact with nature, to respond toit in a way that really does lift his spirit in a trulyRomantic way:

Why not spend the night here? he askedhimself; I have a bit of bread, and I am free!

His soul exulted in this grand phrase, hishypocrisy prevented his feeling free evenwith Fouque. Cradling his head in his hands[and looking out over the plain], Julien satstill in his cave, happier than he had everbeen in his life, stirred only by his dreamsand the delight of feeling free. Idly hewatched the last rays of the sunset fade oneby one from the heavens. In the midst of animmense darkness his soul wandered, lost

in the contemplation of what awaited himsome day in Paris. It would be, first of all, a


20/27

woman, far more beautiful and of a moreexalted genius than any he had ever beenable to see in the provinces. He adored her;he was beloved in return. If he left her foronly a few moments it was to cover himself

with glory and thus merit even more of herdevotion. (57)

We see in this passage how Julien cancels and turnsaway from true Romantic freedom, which is given tohim by nature. Instead he uses the moment to indulgein dreams of social glory. His interest in the woman isnot for any particular woman but for one so beautifuland so devoted that his life will seem a triumphcompared to the provincial existence. He doesn't herehave the central imaginative intelligence, so prominentin Wordsworth andJane Eyre, to recognize that thefreedom which makes him so happy has nothing to dowith social success and everything to do with a muchmore challenging inner relationship with the world ofnature.That's all very well, one may say, but Julien cannot livein that cave forever. What is he supposed to do torealize his romantic ambitions for himself? What sort ofopportunities for worthwhile self-creation for a person

like Julien does that society afford? And the answer is,not very many, and none at all if the opportunities havealso to include social fame, a beautiful society woman,and a life of ancient chivalry. Whatever else theauthentic life is going to demand of Julien, it's not goingto be compatible with his social ambitions. But theseJulien is not going to give up, and because he isunwilling to give them up, he cannot see that there aresome alternatives.For there are people in this novel who try to live life on

their own terms, without succumbing to thecompromises of a corrupt society. These people are,without exception, either on the fringes or in danger.But they do exist. The Abbe Chelan, whom Julienadmires, like his friend Fouque, hold out to himopportunities for a self-realized life. But theopportunities are not sufficiently grand for Julien. Likethe freedom he feels in nature, the possibilities offriendship or a life dedicated to being a good priest donot satisfy his social ambitions. And so, just as Juliendeceives himself about the feelings he has in nature, sohe deceives the Abbe and Fouque. And Mme de Renal


21/27

offers him love, but that is not enough for him, not atleast until it's too late to do anything about it.He cannot truly love, of course, because he's always tooworried about the impression he is making, because he

can never quite drop the mask he has adopted in orderto advance his social ambitions: the possibilities for agenuinely meaningful emotional assertion of himself areconstantly vitiated by his awareness of what otherpeople might think. Rousseau in Discourse on Inequalitymentions the oppressiveness of self-reflection, how thatcan rob us of our authenticity by making us unhappyabout who we are. Julien Sorel is a text book case ofwhat Rousseau is talking about.And that, of course, marks a big difference between himand Jane Eyre. Because she is confident about who sheis and the conception she wants realized in the world,she is not afraid of other people, especially of herfriends, and she is never paralyzed with selfreflection inthe midst of a hostile society (although she is thinkingabout herself much of the time). She will determine whoher friends are and the terms of the friendship, but shewill not play the hypocrite because they do not offer hera sufficiently grand life. Of course, Jane is lucky: shediscovers her friends and gets the inheritance at just

the right time--to that extent the situation she is in is farless complex than Julien's. Still, in an important senseshe is always true to herself in a way that Julien neveris.Julien himself is at times aware of this central deficiencyin himself, his inability to live up to what he wants to be.But when he tries to wrestle with that problem, wediscover that he doesn't have the intelligence fully tograsp the issue:

Like Hercules, he found himself faced with achoice, not between vice and virtue butbetween comfortable mediocrity and theheroic dreams of youth. Well, he said tohimself, I don't really have a firm characterafter all--and this was the thought thatcaused him deepest pain. I'm not made ofthe stuff that goes into great men, since I'mafraid that eight years spent in moneymaking will rob me of the sublime energythat goes into the doing of extraordinarydeeds. (59)


22/27

This is an interesting admission--that he lacks sufficientgreatness to take Fouque's offer and remain true to hisvision of himself. Jane Eyre never showed suchhesitation: teaching at a school for years didn'tcompromise her sense of herself--that notion never

enters into her consciousness. As we discover, Julien'sidea of the doing of extraordinary deeds turns out to befairly paltry and compromising. And that may be part ofthe real problem I alluded to earlier: lacking theintelligent self-confidence to understand what a greatdeed might be, Julien lives to perform one withouthaving any idea where to look or what to do. Thus, he isforced to interpret the affairs he has with unsuspectingwomen as achievements worthy of Napoleonicsignificance.For it is still possible in this world to strive for greatdeeds. The novel contains at least two characters whoare living up to Napoleonic standards, who are carryingout the sort of heroic life for themselves that Julien oncedreamed about: Count Altamira, who is under sentenceof death for taking part in a liberal revolt in Spain, andPhilip Vane, finishing off his seventh year in an Englishprison. Julien likes and admires both of these men; theystimulate him. But he's not about to take the way theylive and what they live for as a serious option for him.

He doesn't even consider that option--which indicates,as well as anything, just how much his heroicconception of himself is a literary creation rather than atruly experiential desire. Julien is far too timid to put hiscourage on the line for anything other than winning thenext skirmish in an amorous intrigue.So when we come to the question of whether or not weshould like Julien because he is, well, somehow differentfrom everyone else, that he has a source of vitality andimagination, however limited and misplaced, that no

one else possesses, I'm not so sure that that providessufficient cause for liking him. It's true that the societyaround him is stifling, gradually killing itself withboredom relieved only by gossip and an occasionalconspiracy. But Julien's way of conducting his life insuch a setting strikes me as equally inadequate.In fact, that is why I find this novel such a strongindictment against the culture it depicts. To live by asocial standard is to condemn oneself to a trivialconformity and become a slave to convention, gossip,mercenary manipulations, and overwhelming boredom.But to seek to deal with that by some secret inner life,


23/27

cleverly concealed and Romantically inspired, leads to atriviality equally dehumanizing. Julien may be activeand successful, but what does that turn him into? Hedoesn't have the inner material out of which authenticRomantic heroes are made: he lacks the Right Stuff.Alternatives to these two choices do exist, as I havementioned, but they are on the fringes. And it may bethat that is the best we can hope for in a culture wheresocial ideals have become trivial conventions andRomantic aspiration self-defeating social ambition andinner irresolution. There doesn't appear to be muchspontaneity, generosity, love, or honesty except on thefringes, among the Fouques and Chelans and MmeRenals, none of whom carries much social influence orweight.Certainly if we take Julien as a sympathetic Romantichero, this novel seems to be suggesting that the socialworld has no place for such an individual; his onlyrecourse therefore is to, in effect, go underground,protecting himself with deception and hypocrisy. Andyet, the novel suggests that in the process of doing this,the hero becomes infected with the very disease he istrying to keep at bay, and thus ends up hopelesslycompromised. To protect his imagination, he has

forfeited it. One guards one's nobility in such a way thatone loses any claims to being noble, except those thatarise from a self-inflicted suicide.This paints a fairly grim picture of the novel, and yet itis one I find myself responding to. That's because I don'tsee any redeeming merit to Julien's life in the ending. AsI say, this is something we may want to argue about,because the ending is very elliptical: there are manythings we want to know about Julien's motivation whichwe are simply not told. I personally read that last

episode as the final futile illusion of a young innerlyweak Romantic who comes to believe that he hasreached a full understanding of life only because he nolonger has to deal with it: he strikes me as a ratherpathetic victim.However, the end of the novel has been read in anumber of different ways. Some see it giving Julien thestature of a tragic hero, whose unwillingness tocompromise with his noble vision of himself costs himhis life. That is rather different from how I picture him,but the novel has room for such conflicts ofinterpretation because in many ways Julien's character


24/27

is rather elusive, particularly at the end. But a good dealof one's view of Julien as a noble hero or pathetic victimor something else will depend upon the extent to whichone senses in him a certain nobility of character (as,say, a defier of society or as a sensitive lover)

throughout, something truer to his real nature that thecrass social ambition so prominent in his life.K. Romantic Irony: The Cancelled ChequeTechnique: The Conclusion of the NovelOne feature of the novel which makes it difficult todecide finally on Julien's character is the constantpresence of new form of irony (not new to Stendhal, butnew in the Romantic period), what has come to be

called Romantic Irony.

Irony, you will recall, refers to a figure of speech whichhas a particular surface meaning which is contradictedby the underlying or implied meaning. Normally ironywill suggest that a particular expression is not quitewhat it appears to be. Romantic irony is a particularform of this technique in which we are offered what isapparently something solid and meaningful, only tohave that apparent solidity questioned or removed. Themost obvious forms of Romantic Irony occur on the

stage, where typically something we have accepted forwhat it appears to be turns out to be something else (atypical technique occurs in Goethe's Faust, where abeautiful young women will suddenly reveal that she isa witch, or a handsome Greek god will take off his maskto reveal that he is Mephistopheles).This technique of Romantic Irony, which you might liketo think of as something like writing a cheque only tocancel it (that is, creating something of apparently firmvalue only to later reveal that it is worthless or at leastnot worth what it originally appeared to be), is apronounced feature of modern style, as we shall see inthe poetry of T. S. Eliot. In this novel, Stendhal uses thedevice again and again, just to keep the readeruncertain about what has really been achieved fromone moment to the next.

A simple example would be a sentence like thefollowing: I have discovered that the meaning of thebest life for humanity is a good five cent cigar. Here you

notice that the first part of the sentence creates thesense that we are leading up to a grand statement,


25/27

pregnant with significance. An expectation is createdthat we are going to have delivered to us something weshould attend to. Yet the final part of the sentence, ineffect, cancels that expectation, or at least so qualifiesit that we are not certain just what we have received in

this statement. Is the author serious? Is he beingflippant? sarcastic? pointlessly ironic? or what? We don'tknow.Stendhal's novel is full of ironic moments--small andlarge--like this. As soon as we begin to sense somethingimportant developing in Julien, the emergence ofsomething firm upon which we can build a favourableestimate of his character, doubts are cast upon that. Forexample, whenever Julien has an apparent triumph,especially with a woman, we quickly learn that he isvery uncertain about what has really happened, full ofdoubts and hesitations--so that far from being a triumphthe value of the event is deflated and left uncertain.And one of the main functions of the narrator is toprovide a vehicle for such ironic deflation.L. The Death of Julien: The Absence ofClosureThe most obvious place where this Romantic irony is at

work in this novel is in the final paragraphs, where anyrising admiration we may have for Julien's "heroism" ingoing to his death, is cryptically undercut in a curt,brutal way with the news of Julien's death, the actionsof Mlle de la Mole with his head, and the death of Mmede Renal. What was beginning to look like an affirmationof sorts is so deflated by the news of its absurdistconsequences that we are in double doubt as to how tointerpret the ending.If Stendhal had wanted to establish a clearly tragicending, he no doubt could have done so by providingmore details of Julien's inner state in those final pagesand giving us a picture of his "noble" death. If Stendhalhad wanted us to agree that the death of Julien isindeed just a trivial, futile gesture, he could have madethat more obvious. Those certainties, however, are notthere. What we do have is a section of the book whichseems to suggest that Julien has discovered somethingreally important in prison, so there is, I think, a risingsense of anticipation that something important about

life is being affirmed. But in those final two or threeparagraphs, Stendhal does not come through with the


26/27

sort of affirmation we had been expecting (if we wereanticipating a tragic ending to the novel). Instead thefinal things we learn about deflate the significance wehad been anticipating.This doesn't, of course, cancel out the possibilities oftragic grandeur for Julien, but it casts them in doubt. Weare not certain at the end of the novel whether hisdeath has been, like most of his life, the vain pursuit ofa futile illusion or whether it has affirmed somethingimportant about life. We can (and no doubt will) argueabout it, but Stendhal has, through his narrator'sRomantic irony, made sure that there is not enoughthere for us to determine the issue clearly on theevidence of what is in the text.The effect here, as in so much of the novel, is tointroduce a radical ambiguity just where we mosturgently require clarity--or at least enoughunambiguous evidence to be confident about theconclusions we draw. Since we don't get that, the novelleaves us somewhat perplexed: Just what have this lifeand this death amounted to? In other words, we wantclosure. Of course, we can impose closure on the novel,but only if we provide something that isn't clearly thereor choose to ignore something that is.Romantic irony of this sort is a favourite device forcommunicating to the reader the radical instability ofvalue in the consciousness of the modern individual(including the reader), who through endless self-reflection, moral uncertainty, and constant socialhypocrisy never quite knows where he or she stands inrelation to firm moral or emotional territory. The searchfor the authentic life gets dissolved in the lack of anysolid ground inside the self upon which to start building.Such irony is thus a very pronounced feature of the

modern style, since one of the growing facts of modernlife which writers wish to address is the lack ofemotional and rational certainty about the most seriousquestions of self, morality, and faith, and the ways inwhich our constant desire to focus upon the interior ofour selves induces at last a sort of emotional paralysis.We are going to meet this technique again.In that sense Red and Blackis a very modern novel, andJulien Sorel is a very modern hero, one who desiresabove all else to live an authentic life but who, lackingany firm sense of what an authentic life might meanand sufficient intelligent self-confidence and emotional


27/27

strength to create one (so that his inner sense ofhimself is plagued with constant doubts) and existing ina society from which all notions of heroic conduct havelong disappeared, except as nostalgic memories of theMiddle Ages, is incapable of constructing what he most

desires. The radical ambiguity at the heart of JulienSorel speaks to a radical instability in the moderncharacter, which is no longer able to manifest heroicconduct, because of the self- and socially imposedcontradictions within the human situation.

http://records.viu.ca/~johnstoi/introser/stendhal2.htm

Lecture on Stendhal

Documents

Transcript of Lecture on Stendhal