Generosity Versus Grudgingness in Men

Generosity and Grudgingness in Love

In Self and World Eli Siegel writes: "The purpose of love is to feel closely one with things as a whole." If a man has a battle about generosity and grudgingness as to the world, the battle will go in him as to a woman, too. That is what occurs with Julien Sorel.

Julien is hired by the rich mayor of Verrières and his wife, Madame de Rênal, to be a tutor for their children. Madame de Rênal treats Julien—a peasant—with a kindness and respect he is unaccustomed to. At their very first meeting he is swept. Greeting him at the front door she says:

"What brings you here...?"

Julien turned around sharply and, struck by the very gracious look on Madame de Rênal's face, partly forgot his shyness. Very soon, astonished by her beauty, he forgot everything, even why he had come. Madame de Rênal had to repeat her question.

...Julien had never met anyone so well-dressed, especially a woman with such a dazzlingly beautiful complexion, who had spoken to him gently.

"What, sir" she said at last, "so you know Latin?"

"Yes, madam," he said.

Hearing himself...addressed as 'sir', quite seriously too...was far and away beyond all Julien's expectations.

There and then the bold idea of kissing her hand came into his mind...he was saying to himself: It would be cowardly of me not to perform an action which may be of service to me.

I learned from Aesthetic Realism that a woman stands for the world different from a man, and there is that in a man which does not want to be moved by anything—the grudging thing in him feels this takes away from who he is. That is what Julien feels, and so rather than simply being grateful to Madame de Rênal for showing the world as kind to him, Julien is driven to either possess or dismiss her. His thoughts become turbulent, and he tells himself all these feelings will make for trouble in his job as tutor in her home:

Julien found Madame de Rênal very beautiful, but he hated her for her beauty, seeing in it the first reef on which his career had nearly foundered. He spoke to her as little as possible, in the hope of forgetting the ecstasy that had moved him, on the very first day, to kiss her hand.

Julien Sorel is angry that Madame de Rênal has affected him at all. I learned about this very same thing in an Aesthetic Realism class some years ago.

I was seeing a woman, and without being wholly conscious of this, didn't like the fact that she affected me so much. I would feel swept and then cold, and didn't understand why. Ellen Reiss asked me what I thought of having "depth of feeling" for someone, and I answered, "It's a tremendous thing to feel about another person." "Are you for it or against it?" she asked. I said, "I'm for it." And Ellen Reiss then asked: "Only for it? Do you think in the height of passion a person can say inwardly 'It is I whom I should be loving'? Do you think a person can feel, 'I'm swept and it's not by me? The hell with this!'?"

What I learned about myself in this discussion and others enabled me to care for a woman in a new, larger way—Meryl Nietsch-Cooperman, who, I am so proud to say, I am married to. Knowing Meryl, her perceptions about the world and about me, has made me a stronger, wider man and I'm grateful to her. It makes me so happy to be studying together in classes taught by Miss Reiss, learning about ourselves, humanity, art and happenings in the world today.

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