Our Reading Journey

In the Winter of 2024, we immersed ourselves in the post-Napoleonic chill of 19th-century France through the eyes of Julien Sorel. The son of a carpenter who finds himself too refined for his origins, Julien navigates a society where the Red of the army and the Black of the clergy seem to be the only paths. We followed his trajectory from a humble tutor in the Rênal household to the glittering, dangerous salons of Paris. Our discussion focused on Julien’s forbidden affair with Madame de Rênal—a relationship that began as a calculated conquest but transformed into a genuine, if destructive, passion. We traced his rise and his spectacular downfall, analyzing how his own egocentric and ambitious nature acted as both his engine and his executioner.

The intellectual core of our session was Stendhal’s pioneering use of the interior monologue. We analyzed how the concise and direct prose strips away the romantic fluff of the era to reveal the cold, tactical thoughts of a protagonist who views life as a battlefield. We spent significant time debating the authenticity as luxury—the idea that for a man like Julien, being his true self is a death sentence. To survive, he must become a broken figure caught in the gears of a society that demands performance. We explored the tragic irony that Julien only finds his true self and a sense of peace in the shadow of the guillotine, once the social end he so feared becomes an inevitability. We concluded that the novel is a profound social critique: a study of a man who erected emotional barriers to protect a heart that was ultimately at the mercy of the powerful and the women who truly loved him.

About the Author

[P2] Stendhal (the pen name of Henri Beyle, 1783–1842) was a writer who lived with the same intensity and "Beylisme" (his personal philosophy of the pursuit of happiness) that he infused into his characters. A soldier under Napoleon and a lifelong observer of the human heart, he famously claimed that "a novel is a mirror carried along a high road." By mastering the "mechanics of the soul" long before the advent of modern psychology, Stendhal created a literary legacy that influenced everyone from Tolstoy to Zola. He wrote for "the happy few," yet Le Rouge et le Noir has become a universal classic, a permanent fixture in the list of the greatest books ever written.