قصة الكتاب :
The Red and the Black is a French novel by Stendhal that was written and published in two volumes in 1830. The novel’s full title in French was Le Rouge et le Noir: Chronique du XIXe siècle which meant The Red and the Black: A Chronicle of the 19th century, a title that indicates its two-fold literary purpose. The tale is both historical and psychological. It chronicles the life of a young man from a modest background who attempts to rise socially using his talent, hard work, deception and hypocrisy but ultimately lets his passions get the better of him.

\r\nThe protagonist is the handsome and ambitious Julien Sorel. Sorel is eager to rise above his humble upbringing as a carpenter’s son and dreams of following in the footsteps of his hero, Napoleon. He is hired to be a tutor to the children of Mme de Rênal. Seeing no chances of advancement in the army after the fall of Napoleon, he decides to make his mark in the church as it was the place where men at the time gained power. Even as he trains to be a priest, he seduces the mayor’s wife. His affair with Mme de Rênal soon becomes the talk of the town and a source of great embarrassment to the mayor, whose political opponents milk the most out of the scandal. Julien is sent away to another seminary, where he manages to make an impression with his intelligence. His intentions are purely selfish and he manages to deceive everyone in this regard. In a turn of events that work in his favour, Julien gets sent to Paris as personal assistant to the Marquis. Here he gets a taste of the glamorous Parisian society, which both impresses and disgusts him. The Marquis’s daughter, Mathilde, falls in love with Julien and they get into an affair. When Mathilde get pregnant and tells the Marquis about it, he is furious but decides to ennoble Julien so that he can get married to Mathilde. Julien finally gets the aristocratic title he always sought. When Mme de Rênal gets news of this, she proceeds to write to the Marquis defaming Julien’s character portraying him as an insincere womanizer who was merely using Mathilde to gain social status. The Marquis calls off the nuptials and an enraged Julien tries to murder Mme de Rênal. She survives the attempt but Julien is sentenced to death anyway. He realizes that his love for Mme de Rênal was real and she visits him till the end, dying three days after his execution.

\r\nAlthough Le Rouge et le Noir is portrayed as a bildungsroman of Julien Sorel, it is also a satirist take on French society in the 19th century. The aristocracy and the clergy were at the top rung of the social ladder and symbolized greed, hypocrisy and materialism, all of which would lead to their ultimate downfall in the coming years. The story has been adapted into several films along the years. The book is considered to be Stendhal’s major work and one of the greatest novels of the 19th century.\r\n