Discuss with reference to Le Rou

provinces to Paris, climbing the social ladder from working class to career man, along with his various love affairs, is fantastical yet a realistic means of ...
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Olivia Alter

MT1 A. Jefferson

‘L’auteur pense que, excepté pour la passion du héros, le roman doit être un miroir.’ Discuss with reference to Le Rouge et le Noir. Nineteenth-century France is recognised for the development of the novel as a genre, to respond to the demands of a new post-Revolution era, a progressively scientific age with greater interest in material facts and sincerity than the vague enthusiasms associated with the Romantics. However, whilst lacking a specific doctrine meant that novelists could be much freer in their expression and methodology, they still came under attack by critics with differing views about what realistic representation entailed. Stendhal is one of the main authors whose work encouraged such debates, for Le Rouge et le Noir is frequently upheld as the first work of literary realism in France at the time (although the term ‘realism’ was not coined until much later), and yet when the novel was published, readers were shocked at the protagonist’s lack of ‘vraisemblance’ and morality. They argued that Romantic ideals and sentimentalism did not have its place in their modern society, and the quotation in question, as well as various other allusions to the novel’s role as a more exact representation of the world, would imply that Stendhal was of the same mind, at least partially. Nevertheless, one must ask how the novel could be considered a mirror if such a major element, the hero, was excluded from the definition, and whether this exclusion is correct. Many now situate Stendhal between the varying trends in thought present in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and accept a more ambiguous reading of the ‘Chronique de 1830’, seeing that leaning more towards one end of the romantic-realistic scale is to misunderstand the author’s intention. Since there was no set method for a novelist in the nineteenth century, the writer exposed the truths of society on his own terms, always mindful of the public reading his work and yet creating

Olivia Alter

MT1 A. Jefferson

a piece of fiction, thus requiring the use of their imagination. With his seemingly conflicting ideas about the novel, Stendhal aimed to persuade the reader that they were in the world to which they were accustomed, but then reflected it in such a way as to subvert their preconceived ideas and call into question the ‘doxic’ foundations upon which the structure of society was built. Whilst the Romantics dealt first and foremost with the feelings of the individual, the advances in scientific thought in the eighteenth century, followed by the new social, political and economical situation in the nineteenth century, generated different demands for literature. Realism, as it is now known, was not so much a doctrine than a reaction against excessive idealism, with nineteenth-century French novelists taking their cue from the ancient notions of ‘mimesis’ (often translated as imitation) and verisimilitude (a realistic impression based on common opinion), along with inspiration from other European writers. French intellectuals of the 1820s were interested in a ‘philosophy of history’, whereby the human will and imagination had a role in making history, and cultural institutions were more important than political ones in understanding social processes. The historical novels of Sir Walter Scott had a large influence over this progression in French writing, hinted at by Stendhal when a character of his claims that ‘l’histoire d’Angleterre [lui] sert de miroir pour [leur] avenir’1. Both Scott’s creative method of historical reconstruction and modern approach to narrative representation, combining the picturesque with the factual, made the French realise the need for a new means of literary expression and subject matter if their works were to serve a contemporary, liberal, bourgeois reading public. Thus they made a conscious decision to 1

Le Rouge et le Noir, book II, chapter I

Olivia Alter

MT1 A. Jefferson

depict daily life with fewer abstractions through stories rather than formal commentary or argument; as Stendhal suggests in Racine et Shakespeare, a public who had just lived through a revolution, the Napoleonic wars and a multitude of changes in modern history could hardly be expected to find a Racinian tragedy, condemned to the limited and dogmatic genre of classicism, particularly appealing. The novel became a popular genre in the nineteenth century, since tales of ‘parvenus’ were analogous with the aspirations of the bourgeois, both fictional characters and real people feeling trapped in a lower social status. The ‘roman’ can be seen as an instrument and mirror of historical evolution and trends in thought, witnessing the rise of the bourgeoisie as well as a means of philosophical contestation, reflecting both social and moral uncertainties. The ‘roman-miroir’ was a key image of Stendhal’s reflections, first appearing in Armance but becoming more explicit in Le Rouge et le Noir. He insisted on a representation of reality as it is, whilst simultaneously defending himself in advance from accusations of immorality, claiming in the preface to his novel of 1827 that an author is just the witness to that which passes before his mirror (or, that which appears in the novel), and he is not to blame if ‘la laideur’ accompanies ‘la beauté’. Through this it would appear that he is excusing himself from creating a character that does not conform to a ‘true’ reflection of the society he is depicting, and is in accordance with the quotation in question. Julien Sorel is recognisable since he represents particular aspects of society but the contemporary reader was offended by the hero’s a-typical behaviour and incomprehensible crime. Stendhal later formulated in his autobiographical novel, Vie de Henry Brulard, that the public must use their imagination for the novel to come to life: ‘Un roman est

Olivia Alter

MT1 A. Jefferson

comme un archet, la caisse du violon qui rend les sons, c’est l’âme du lecteur.’2 When we include the more developed notion of the ‘roman-miroir’ from Le Rouge et le Noir,

Un roman est un miroir qui se promène sur une grande route. Tantôt il reflète à vos yeux l’azur des cieux, tantôt la fange des bourbiers de la route (II, XIX),

we find it is more accommodating for Julien’s character, with the suggestion of movement and progression, the inclusion of both good and bad, moral and immoral, as well as the truth of man and not just his time, since Julien represents a psychological reality too. Stendhal does not propose that the protagonist and his ‘passion’ are exempt from the idea that a novel must be a mirror, but rather hints at the character’s symbolical representation instead. His choice of hero and story, following Julien’s journey from the provinces to Paris, climbing the social ladder from working class to career man, along with his various love affairs, is fantastical yet a realistic means of describing events leading up to the July Revolution – and perhaps it is only fantastical to those contemporary readers who still believed being born into a title meant something, as Julien expresses to Mathilde de la Mole, talking about M. de Croisenois:

Il n’a que de la naissance et de la bravoure, et ces qualités toutes seules, qui faisaient un homme accompli en 1729, sont un anachronisme un siècle plus tard, et ne

2

Chapter 16