The story of the novel “The Red and the Black” originated from an article related to a death penalty case published in a newspaper on February 29, 1828. During the era of the Napoleonic Empire, the red and the black they mean the “army” and the “church” respectively. Those are the two ways of walking of the ambitious young French.
This novel was ahead of its time. “The Red and the Black” is one of the founders of the work of European realism. The novel focuses on the personal struggle and the final failure of the protagonist Julien Sorel, especially in the description of his love and romantic life. It showed successive governments, nobility, church darkness, and despicable upstarts. Although the story focuses on Julien’s love stories, it is still “political fiction” after all.
Stendhal is a literary teacher who shows the main social problems through romance and love. Julien’s two love stories are closely related to the related situation. It is a sample of the conflict with different classes. Although he formed true feelings of love towards Monsieur de Rênal’s wife, but at first, it was only because of vengeful feelings towards the rich and powerful. So when Julien possessed her for the first time; It was not the feeling of love, but Napoleon’s ambitious feeling of success, the “joy of the carnival.”
If we say that Julien’s persecution of Monsieur de Rênal’s wife has some sincere emotions, then Julien’s persecution of Mathilde de la Mole is purely political. Mathilde is not only a noble and arrogant girl, but she was also greatly affected by the French Revolution. She believed that with another revolution, the one that dominates the society will be the youth like Julien. So, a marriage with Julien is not only full of romantic, but also powerful patron. And on the other hand, Julien believes that marriage will lead him to a higher power and decides to cheat on his love.
However, Julien failed, because the situation at that time was still controlled by the government and the feudal class. Julien is not in that circle of people; and those people would never allow someone like Julien to achieve their aspiration.
“The red and the black” surpassed in the creation of typical personages in typical surroundings, the balanced structure of the art and the technique of the “drawing”. And the reason critics called Stendhal “the father of the modern novel” is his outstanding ability to describe the psychology of his characters. The authors of realism emphasize having realistic details, but Stendhal is different from Balzac. He focused on the details and realistic psychological parts, rather than the physical environment. The author often uses a sentence or two to expand people’s action and setting, and uses page after page to describe the mental part. As an example, the author used 3 pages for Julien to become aware of Madame de Rênal’s letter and killed her with a gun, but he described love with Mathilde with hundreds of pages of detailed texts. Furthermore, Madame de Rênal’s mixed feeling of joy, bread and regret, but that she was not willing to give up her love for Julien, demonstrated Stendhal’s great abilities.
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