Being at the mayor's home, Julien comes to know the rich people of Verrières. He has new and fine clothes, and has learned the mannered ways of the wealthy. He is selfish, yet Stendhal shows he is fiercely against himself; he is out for himself, but often has passionate emotion for the suffering of others.

For example, one night Julien has dinner at the home of Monsieur Valenod, a rich man who runs the town prison, which is next door to his home. The meal is sumptuous and the guests are fancy, yet they begin to hear the prisoners next door singing a bawdy song. Many of these prisoners likely were forced to commit crimes simply to eat. M. Valenod has them stopped—"I've had the beggars reduced to silence," he says. Stendhal writes:

These words were too much for Julien—he had the manners but not as yet the mentality of his present position...he felt a big tear stealing down his cheek.
...Julien's conscience was telling him: There you see the filthy riches you'll acquire...Possibly you'll get a post worth twenty thousand francs, but then, while you are gorging yourself with meat, you'll have to stop some wretched prisoner singing; you'll give dinners with the money you've stolen from his miserable pittance—and while you dine he'll be unhappier still! Oh, Napoleon; how sweet it was in your day to climb to fortune through the risks of battle!—but to add so meanly to some poor fellow's misery!

There is in Julien deep generosity of mind, real feeling for those men. It is so different from Julien the social climber, the schemer.

Unlike Julien here, I once didn't care a bit if I added to a person's misery or happiness. The way I saw money was representative of many people: I was excessively generous to myself, buying expensive clothes and items, while I was grudging about what other people deserved.

Once, on a trip to Mexico, I haggled over the price of a wicker basket, priding myself on how I beat out the store-keeper, who was very poor, for a cheap price. I didn't know that the state of mind that had me act that way also made me hate myself and feel I was a fraud who pretended to be a friendly guy. In a class, Ellen Reiss has asked me questions about money, such as: "Do you think money should be used to make you lordly?" and "Do you want to honor the value of things through money?" Thinking about this has enabled me to change—to feel I'm honestly trying to be kind.

In The Red and the Black there is a danger of Julien's affair with Madame de Rênal being found out, and he must leave Verrières. She is greatly distressed at her infidelity to her husband, and turns to religion to try and gain some peace of mind. Julien comes to be the personal secretary to the immensely wealthy Marquis de la Mole at his home in Paris, and he feels he's getting ahead.

There he meets the Marquis' daughter, Mathilde, who is the toast of Paris, and he has the same purpose with her as he did with Madame de Rênal. Julien is affected by Mathilde but he resents it. There is a turbulent relation, a contest about who will show more care than the other, and Julien has this grudging strategy—"Keep her mind occupied all the time with this grave doubt: Does he love me?" Yet his ill will makes him miserable; he is constantly gloomy and feels "despair."

Mademoiselle de la Mole becomes pregnant. Her father, though furious, agrees she and Julien will be married and he gives Julien land, a title and a great deal of money. "Julien was intoxicated with ambition," writes Stendhal. But just then, Madame de Rênal, at the insistence of a priest to whom she confessed, writes a letter to the Marquis de la Mole saying Julien is merely a fortune hunter and the marriage should not take place. Furious, Julien wants to get revenge on Madame de Rênal and almost succeeds, wounding her with a pistol.

Julien is imprisoned and will stand trial. He insists to the magistrate, "I am guilty," and refuses to take any line of defense—he is determined to die. I believe that Stendhal has an important message in this—Julien Sorel feels guilty for having lived a largely selfish life and feels he should be punished. Before he dies, thoughts of regret insist in him: "[Am I] really unkind and heartless?" "Have I loved much?"

I want people every where to be able to study Aesthetic Realism, so they can have the honestly generous, proud emotions they were meant to have.

Article Sections
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5