L’arrivisme de Julien Sorel à travers la femme dans le Rouge et le Noir

Abstract

This paper is a descriptive and analytic study of the character of “Julian Sorel”, who is the hero of the French novel “Le Rouge et Le Noir” written by Stendhal. He is an ambitious person. His ambition pushes him to be a social climber through women. He was born in a poor family of middle class. He dreams of high familial status and also high social position. His dreams can’t be achieved without establishing strong relations with women because of his modest origin. Therefore, Julian Sorel tries to profit any chance to achieve his dreams by making plans, as if he was in a war, to make women fall in his love. He imagines himself as Napoleon Bonaparte. But the difference between both of them, that countries and cities dominated by Napoleon, and in the case of Julian hearts of women dominated by his love. This love that makes Mme de Renal, wife of the mayor of the city of Verrières falls in love with Julian in a way which changes her character from obeyed woman to her husband to a rebel woman against her life and her society. Also Julian push Mlle de La Mole to stand against her father Le marquis de La Mole and obliged him to accept her marriage with Julian and then gave him the title of noblesse, Le Comte de la Vernaye. So Mme de Renal is considered as the gate by which Julian crosses his way to the bourgeois society and Mlle de La Mole could represent his essential supporter in this society. By analyzing the character of Julian Sorel, we reached the conclusion that Stendhal tries to criticize his own society, the French society of the 19th century, based essentially upon money, hierarchisation, egoism and opportunism, generally translated by the principle of “the goal justifies the means”. Also Stendhal criticizes women's education and masculine domination.