Julien Sorel

Julien Sorel is the hero of the novel the Red and the Black of Stendhal, published in 1830. In its first versions, work was to carry for title its only first name.

Course

Intelligent, beautiful and ambitious young man, it is born with Verrières, small town of the Doubs, but these geographical ascriptions are not any realistic. Wire of a carpenter, scorned by his father and his brothers for his physical weakness and its taste of the books, it is impassioned for Napoleon. The priest of the village, the Chélan abbot, teaches Latin, which enables him to become tutor of the children of the mayor of Canopies, Mr. to him de Rênal.

He thus undertakes his social education while leaving his condition of child of the people but while being confronted with the dominant classes of the province at the time of the Restauration. He is at the same time domestic, like the Rousseau of the Confessions , and in rise towards a statute of clerk, dreaming later to reach the social capacity by the Red of the military uniform or by the Black of the clergy.

This character of novel of formation makes another training: that of the seduction, which also returns to the young person Rousseau and his meeting with Mrs. de Warrens, appreciably older than him. Julien rejects the advances of the maidservant and chooses the social challenge of the conquest of soft and fragile Mrs. de Rênal. Its romantic ardor will conclude it the successfully without Stendhal looking further into exactly its feelings for Mrs. de Rênal whose love for the young man is clearer. However the scene, at the beginning of the novel, where Julien asserts the stake to seize the hand of Mrs. de Rênal to the favor of the evening, very clearly shows the psychology of the young man. The scene of seduction is described, through the irony stendhalienne, like a scene of combat: " At the exact moment when ten hours will sound, I will carry out what, during all the day, I promised myself to do this evening, or I will go up at home to burn the cervelle". At Julien, large admiror of Napoleon, no decision justifies himself without the idea of combat. Its pride is explained by the warlike ideal which shows through here: all the novel is justified according to this initial choice.

Constrained by social morals, it leaves without much Verrières torment and ploughed up Mrs. de Rênal. It passes by the seminar of Besancon and discovers the conflicts of being able in the clergy before finding a way promising while becoming, in Paris, the secretary of the Marquis of the Mole. Its intelligence and its extraordinary memory lead it to great successes, as well in the aristocratic living rooms of Paris as on mission diplomatic abroad. But little by little a conflict love with the proud girl of the marquis is tied, Mathilde of the Mole which is very in love with Julien. For Julien, Mathilde is desirable because the others wish it. It is the social status of Mathilde which pushes the young man to accept this connection. But this one falls pregnant: to avoid dishonor, the marquis bequeaths an important sum to Julien, whom it makes lieutenant of hussards and annoblit under the name of Julien Sorel of Vernaye. But the new officer lets rock his life when it tries to kill, in the church of Canopies, Mrs. de Rênal whom her confessor forced to denounce the immoralism of the young man to the marquis.

By visiting it in her prison, Mrs. de Rênal shows the force of the feeling that it carries to him, but Julien is especially worried to denounce the justice of classes of his judges, and drapes himself in an attitude (enough surprising to tell the truth) of Revolutionist condemned for his social audacity, and not for his attempted murder. He refuses to ask his grace and dies with dignity on the scaffold. Even in the last moment, it defines its death as the consequence of its combat - as if it controlled its life until the end. Mathilde, imitating its ancestor, fact of his cut head the object of a “romantic” worship and Mrs. de Rênal dies three days later.

Sources of the character

Many readers of Stendhal endeavoured to put at the day certain layers of the character of Julien Sorel: some are well-known, others, more subtle, are diffused.

Antoine Berthet

The most obvious source is Antoine Berthet, the scandalous protagonist of a criminal fact various whose history is used as general screen with the novel of Stendhal.

Under Charles X, Antoine Berthet, wire of marshal-shoeing, ambitionnant a fast social rise, passes initially by the seminar before becoming the tutor of the children of the mayor of the small town of Brangues in Isere. It has a connection with the mother of its pupils but gives up it to allure a young heiress while putting itself in the good graces of the father, the count of Cordon. Congédié and, thinks it, denounced in its intrigues without scruple by its former mistress, it tries to assassinate it, on July 22nd, 1827, at the time of an religious office, with blows of gun before trying to commit suicide: she will only be wounded and he too. He will be condemned in Court of Assizes to Grenoble and will be carried out on February 23rd, 1828. This dramatic fact various will mark the local memory by its social components (the son of the people which undermines the woman of notable), nuns (the former seminarist become assassin in full mass) and morals (to make an attempt on the life of a woman, which more is mother). The press will give an account lengthily of it, in particular the Gazette of the Courts of Grenoble which Stendhal will read, perhaps in his/her sister near Brangues: there the antipathies of Henri Beyle for the city and the company of its native area will find a starting point indisputable for its novel.

Adrien Lafargue

One evokes also a close source, that of Adrien Lafargue, working cabinetmaker of Bagnères-with-Bigorre, commune now located in the Hautes-Pyrénées, allured then rejected by a married woman, Therese Loncan. By spite it kills it out of two blows of gun; judged to bases, he is condemned on March 21st, 1829 to five years of prison, the court having recognized extenuating circumstances to him. Stendhal does itself seems it reference to this business in Promenades in Rome but the track remains poor, the fact various somewhat banal resident…

Claude-Marie Guyétand

Beyond the criminal fact various, one could seek a complementary approach by studying the typical course of many of other young people of the time of Stendhal who dream of social rise and join the various capital and his gleamings. A rather judicious bringing together was tried between Julien Sorel and the particular case of Claude-Marie Guyétand who had some celebrity at the end of the XVIIIe century with her satirical poem the Genius avenged . Born into 1748 parents serfs from the abbey of Saint-Claude in the the High Jura, it will pass by the seminar of Besancon before becoming in Paris the secretary of the Marquis de Villette from which it will accompany the political ambitions progressists with the beginning by the Révolution by asserting its popular social origin regularly, in particular during the abolition of the Servage in France which will intervene only in the Nuit of August 4th, 1789. This track makes it possible to clarify the choice of the Franche-Comté as tallies of the first part of the Rouge and the Black and the late revolutionary standpoint of Julien Sorel in front of his judges.

Let us specify that Henri Beyle (future Stendhal) could know, at least indirectly, at the time of its installation in the capital of 1802 to 1805, the Jurassic poet who still continued his publications at the beginning of the XIXe century while being employed (in half balances for reason of disease) with the Ministry for the Foreign relations whereas Stendhal, who occupied to him also functions in the administration, ambitionnait the publication of its first texts and attended the literary circles. Its attention for that which was asserted as “the Serf of the Mount-Jura” also could nourish memory of its crossing of the Jura after its engagement in the reserve army at the time of the countryside of Italy in 1800 during which its regiment had to pass by Dijon, Lons-the-Salt maker, then Saint-Claude to reach Geneva before crossing the Alps to the Large-Saint-Bernard. As many elements which result in adopting the Guyétand approach with the serious one.

The autobiographical track

It is, it also, of course, to consider favorably: Julien and Henri are all the two orphans of mother and Julien, still with half-child, has a vaguely incestueuse connection with Mrs. de Rênal, attentive mother and thus mistress - with the double direction of the word - of the tutor of his children, which can return if one follows the psychoanalysts to the very strong attachment that Stendhal kept for his/her missing mother. Let us add the hatred of the tyrannical father, admiration for the Lumières and the respect for Napoleon whose Stendhal will not be separated. Let us supplement by other features common to the author and the character: the same antipathy for the middle-class go-getter, the same judgment of the clerical practices and the traditional rise in Paris of the provincial young person who seeks adventurous life and social life in the capital.

Jenrel, double of Julien Sorel

One raised much the bringing together which makes Julien with Louis Jenrel criminal whose extract of newspaper evokes the execution (delivers first, end of CH. V: “Poor unhappy, its name finishes like mine… ”) while underlining there, with good reason, the prefiguration, even the presentiment, of the tragic destiny of the young hero. One wondered about the name invented by Stendhal until seeing there the anagram approximate of HENRI BEYLE: all the sounds are indeed taken again, except for the " b" , with the transformation of the " i" in " j" (it is known that the distinction does not exist in Latin). “Julien Sorel, it is me! ” wants to perhaps tell us the author who liked so much to code his autobiographical writings…

The name Sorel

It was connected rather easily to the Italian word (expensive language with Stendhal) sorella which means “sister” and the author insists several times in the novel on the delicacy and the femininity of Julien completely opposed to the coarseness of his brothers who scorn it. Julien Sorel would be the little sister, the Ugly Duckling which must prove its virility unceasingly, with itself and the others. The attacks which it delivers and the reference to Danton (Book second, CH. XII and CH. XLII) go rather clearly in this direction. Why not?

The Julien first name

Was the initial title of the novel quite simply Julien and thus that the choice of this first name (rare at the time?) it was questioned also: the track there still would be Italian. For Stendhal, passionately moved by Florence, this first name of Julien surely returned (among other echoes) to Julien de Médicis, the brother of Laurent Splendid the, assassinated in the cathedral of Florence in 1478 by the henchmen of Pazzi whereas his/her brother the duke escaped by miracle from the same death. The posthumous portraits of Botticelli represent Julien, “prince of youth”, with the closed eyes of the funeral masks to which echo those make which Mathilde of the Mole made " to carve with high expenses in Italie" and that Stendhal mentions in a revealing line at the any end of the novel. The bringing together of the physical details between the tables of Botticelli and the notations of Stendhal is also enough striking: " Features irregular, but delicate, and an aquiline nose. Large black eyes. Hair châtain dark, planted strong low, gave him a small face… Its extremely pensive air and its great paleness…." The remarkable proximity of the Julien, fragile juniors by family, culminates in this romantic destiny which rocks in full youth by a murder in the cathedral: Julien de Médicis died in 25 years and Julien Sorel evokes his death, which he in fact sought, while saying to CH. XLIV: “Thus me, I will die in twenty-three years”. It was added to consolidate the bringing together that Mrs. de Rênal also has something of the female figures of Botticelli and that passion in love with the women of the novel returns explicitly to the century of the Renaissance. It is a track reasonably stendhalienne… Citons in complement some lighting lines of the Laurent Splendid the of Jack Lang: “All that encourages to think, with Machiavel, that the brother of Laurent incarnates the figure of the “bad archer” in policy. For lack of ambition in the ends, it cannot reach the target that it aims, and is thus unable to force “fortune”, as a gifted child who would miss resolution and of constancy”. Isn't this applicable also to Julien Sorel?

A romantic hero

Julien Sorel thus seems a romantic hero rather well characterized, carried at the same time by youth, the downgrading, the ambition and pride, the feeling in love, the training of oneself and the world before drawing up his own statue of rebel who achieves his tragic destiny.

He is by there the brother of Hernani or Ruy Blas and the cousin of Rastignac or Rubempré which is major figures of the romantic drama hugolien or Balzac novel of the same time. But the complexity of the character of Stendhal is not reduced to an adjective and other tracks would deserve to be explored… To start with that of the player who, for a share, exploits his life blows of caster, by sometimes misant on the Red , sometimes on the Black …

Interpreters of the role

Julien Sorel was incarnated with the screen:

External bonds

(See what does write Benjamin Aubry in '' the Gazette of the Delights '' (p. 8) in 2004, article “Guyétand, epigone of Voltaire? ”)

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