A review by sidharthvardhan
The Red and the Black by Stendhal

4.0

“Such is, alas, the drawback of an excessive civilization. At the age of twenty, the heart of a young man, if he has any education, is a thousand leagues from that devil-may-care attitude without which love is often only the most tedious duty.”

It is a powerful combination of a satire and a romantic novel. The satire parts are where Julien, the young man, is trying to find a living in a society which he finds full of arrogant hypocrites wherever he turns – rich of the country, priest, governments etc with their ridiculous ways.

“In Seminaries, there is a way of eating a boiled egg which reveals the progress one has made in the godly life”

Throughout he believes that poor are better for not being such hypocrites only to be disillusioned later on by his own father. That we call ‘maturity’ looks like accepting this hypocrisy. That seems to be the only way to earn a living in upper society. Julien, because of his ambitious nature, tries to adopt to those ways but they don’t come naturally to him. His sensitive nature and learned mind makes it difficult for him to take their arrogant ways.

“How am I to destroy this humiliating sensibility?”

Mostly his efforts fail and where they succeed (or appear to succeed) they only make him feel ashamed of himself.

“ All the first steps taken by our hero who fancied himself so prudent were …. foolish in the extreme. Led astray by all the presumption of an imaginative man, he mistook his intentions for facts, and thought himself a consummate hypocrite.”

However not all are hypocrites. There is Madame D. Renal, who has remained secluded from need of turning into a hypocrite because of her wealth, sex and lack of education. Like Julien, she is too innocent for her age, and here comes the romantic part. They fall in one of the slowest love affairs ever. Later Julien falls in love with Matilda too. Both affairs run hundreds of pages. May be a bit too long. There is a lot of holding hands (Strendhal made it sound almost errotic), embraces and kisses in there. The details provided will have you believe that author is giving you blow-by-blow account until suddenly, amid all that holding hands and kisses, heroine announces she has got pregnant. But, but how? I mean... how? By holding hands?

Reminds me of a lot of 80s bollywood movies that way – where couples get pregnant by dancing in the woods.

Anyways, both satirical and romantic parts are full of some beautiful quotes and psychological observations. It is the psychological building of Stendhal’s characters which I liked more than anything else. Also, he opens his chapters with some great quotes from other authors but I haven’t included those here.

“remorse is the only danger that sublime soul dreads!”

“No argument is sufficient to destroy the mastery acquired by ten years of pleasant fancies.”

“'The worst drawback of a prison,' he thought, 'is that one can never close one's door.” True for mobile-phones too.

“ In bold and proud natures, it is only a step from anger with oneself to fury with other people; one's transports of rage are in such circumstances a source of keen pleasure.”

“Were she left alone for a moment with him, she saw him grow visibly embarrassed. This troubled her, for her womanly instinct made her realise that his embarrassment was not in the least degree amorous.”