The Red and the Black

Plot synopsis:
In two volumes, The Red and the Black: A Chronicle of the 19th Century tells the story of Julien Sorel’s life in a monarchic society of fixed social class.
=== Book I ===
Book I presents Julien Sorel, the ambitious son of a carpenter in the fictional village of Verrières, in Franche-Comté, France. He would rather read and daydream about the glory days of Napoleon's long-disbanded army than work his father’s timber business with his brothers, who beat him for his intellectual affectations. He becomes an acolyte of the abbé Chélan, the local Catholic prelate, who later secures him a job tutoring the children of Monsieur de Rênal, the mayor of Verrières. Although he appears to be a pious, austere cleric, Julien is uninterested in the Bible beyond its literary value and how he can use memorised passages (learnt in Latin) to impress important people.
He enters a love affair with Monsieur de Rênal’s wife, which ends when it is revealed to the village by her chambermaid, Elisa, who is also in love with Julien. The abbé Chélan orders Julien to a seminary in Besançon, which he finds intellectually stifling and pervaded with social cliques. The initially cynical seminary director, the abbé Pirard likes Julien and becomes his protector. Later Pirard (a Jansenist) leaves the seminary but fearing backlash against his protégé, recommends Sorel as private secretary to the diplomat Marquis de la Mole, a Catholic legitimist.
=== Book II ===
Book II takes place in the years leading up to the July Revolution of 1830. During this time Julien Sorel lives in Paris as an employee of the de la Mole family. Despite his moving among high society and his intellectual talents, the family and their friends condescend to Julien for being an uncouth plebeian. Meanwhile, Julien is acutely aware of the materialism and hypocrisy that permeate the Parisian élite, and that the counter-revolutionary temper of the time renders it impossible for even well-born men of superior intellect and аеsthetic sensibility to participate in the nation's public affairs.
The Marquis de la Mole takes Julien to a secret meeting, then despatches him on a dangerous mission to communicate a letter (Julien has it memorised) to the Duc d'Angouleme, who is exiled in England; however, the callow Julien is mentally distracted by an unsatisfying love affair, and thus only learns the message by rote, missing its political significance as a legitimist plot. Unwittingly, he risks his life in service to the monarchists he most opposes; to himself, he rationalises these actions as merely helping the Marquis, his employer, whom he respects.
Meanwhile, the Marquis’s bored daughter, Mathilde de la Mole, has become emotionally torn between her romantic attraction to Julien, for his admirable personal and intellectual qualities, and her social repugnance at becoming sexually intimate with a lower-class man. At first, he finds her unattractive, but his interest is piqued by her attentions and the admiration she inspires in others; twice, she seduces and rejects him, leaving him in a miasma of despair, self-doubt, and happiness (for having won her over her aristocratic suitors). Only during his secret mission does he gain the key to winning her affections: a cynical jeu d’amour (game of love) taught to him by Prince Korasoff, a Russian man-of-the-world. At great emotional cost, Julien feigns indifference to Mathilde, provoking her jealousy with a sheaf of love-letters meant to woo Madame de Fervaques, a widow in the social circle of the de la Mole family. Consequently, Mathilde sincerely falls in love with Julien, eventually revealing to him that she carries his child; despite this, whilst he is on diplomatic mission in England, she becomes officially engaged to Monsieur de Croisenois, an amiable, rich young man, heir to a duchy.
Learning of Julien’s romantic liaison with Mathilde, the Marquis de la Mole is angered, but relents before her determination and his affection for Julien, and bestows upon Julien an income-producing property attached to an aristocratic title, and a military commission in the army. Although ready to bless their marriage, he changes his mind after receiving the reply to a character-reference letter he wrote to the abbé Chélan, Julien’s previous employer in the village of Verrières; the reply letter, written by Madame de Rênal — at the urging of her confessor priest — warns the Marquis that Julien Sorel is a social-climbing cad who preys upon emotionally vulnerable women.
On learning of the Marquis’s disapproval of the marriage, Julien Sorel travels back to Verrières and shoots Madame de Rênal during Mass in the village church; she survives, but Julien is imprisoned and sentenced to death. Mathilde tries to save him by bribing local officials, and Madame de Rênal, still in love with Julien, refuses to testify and asks for his acquittal. Despite this, along with the efforts of priests who have looked after him since his early childhood, Julien Sorel is determined to die because the materialist society of Restoration France will not accommodate a low-born man of superior intellect and æsthetic sensibility who possesses neither money nor social connections.
Meanwhile, the presumptive duke, Monsieur de Croisenois, one of the fortunate few of Bourbon France, is killed in a duel fought over a slur upon the honour of Mathilde de la Mole. Her undiminished love for Julien, his imperiously intellectual nature, and its component romantic exhibitionism, render Mathilde’s prison visits to him a duty.
When Julien learns he did not kill Madame de Rênal, his genuine love for her is resurrected — having lain dormant throughout his Parisian time — and she continues to visit him in jail. After he is guillotined, Mathilde de la Mole re-enacts the cherished 16th-century French tale of Queen Margot, who visited her dead lover, Joseph Boniface de La Mole, to kiss the lips of his severed head. She makes a shrine of his tomb in the Italian fashion. Madame de Rênal, more quietly, dies in the arms of her children.

Tags: tragedy, romantic

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