ABSTRACT
In 1830, Marie Henri Beyle, best known by his pen-name, Stendhal,published his novel, The Red and the Black. Its protagonist, Julien Sorel, a young man of modest but not impoverished background, dreams of the great days of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic era, of a life as revolutionary leader, or, even better, as a conquering general in Napoleon’s armies. But war and revolution seem out of the question in France of the 1820s, ruled by the restored Bourbon monarchs, and politically dominated by the conservatives. Nobles and affluent, non-noble landowners – the leading figures in the post-revolutionary civil society of property owners – hold the levers of power, leaving no place for an ambitious youth of the lower middle class. Julien takes out his frustrations in two, rather oddly juxtaposed directions. He enters a seminary and prepares to become a priest – an ultramontanist one – seeing a pro-papal career in the Catholic clergy as the one route to power and influence in the pious and conservative political atmosphere. However, he also becomes a bedroom athlete, getting his revenge on the wealthy and powerful men who block his ascent in the world by seducing their wives and daughters.
