The Red and the Black (1830) is a novel by Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle). It is the story of a young man’s ambition to become prominent and successful in aristocratic society. Its setting is eastern France, in 1830.

Julien Sorel is the nineteen-year-old son of a woodcutter in the provincial town of Verrières. Julian and his father cannot get along with each other. Julien is sensitive and scholarly, and is unsuited to the trade of his father.

Julien has romantic dreams of achieving power and glory, and of overcoming his low social status as the son of a tradesman. He dreams of being like Napoleon, but sees that military ability is not presently the best way to have a successful career. Thus, he decides to prepare for a career in the church rather than in the army. He studies theology with Father Chélan, the eighty-year-old priest of the local parish.

Julien takes on a superficial appearance of piety, and wears the black cassock of a priest. He is hired as a tutor for the children of Monsieur de Rênal, who is mayor of Verrières.

Julien falls in love with the mayor’s wife, Madame de Rênal. She is ten years older than Julien, but she has never really loved her husband, who married her when she was sixteen. She is very religious and devout, but she falls passionately in love with Julien.

Julien is very aware of the social class difference between himself and Madame de Rênal. When he falls in love with her, it is the first time that he has ever fallen in love, but he tries to play the part of a man who is accustomed to brilliant success with women. He is awkward and clumsy, and is unsophisticated, but is eager to learn the elegant manners of aristocratic society.

Because he is acutely aware of the social class difference between himself and Madame de Rênal, he initially questions her sincerity. Thus, his love for her becomes a form of ambition to try to overcome his own feelings of inferiority. His goal is to have power and control over a noble and beautiful woman. At the same time, his unstable sense of pride and self-esteem makes him very sensitive to any perceived slight or humiliation by Monsieur de Rênal or by other members of aristocratic society.

The King makes an official visit to Verrières, and the town engages in a celebration. Madame de Rênal wants to see Julien wear something other than his usual black cassock, and she arranges for him to wear a military uniform in the procession and to ride a horse in the honor guard. After the procession, Julien gallops back to Monsieur de Rênal’s house, so that he can change back into his black cassock and then appear with the bishop and clergy when the King visits the church.

Julien's sudden change of appearance, alternating between the uniform of the army and the church, between the red and the black, is symbolic of the conflict in his personality between truthfulness and pretense, between sincerity and hypocrisy.

Monsieur de Rênal learns of the affair between his wife and Julien from an anonymous letter which has been sent to the Renal house. The letter has been secretly written by Monsieur Valenod, the sub-prefect of Verrières, who dislikes Julien. Monsieur Valenod is a rival of Monsieur de Rênal for public esteem and prestige, and wants to become the mayor of the town.

Father Chélan hears of the relationship between Julien and Madame de Rênal, and arranges for Julien to leave town and to become a student in the seminary at Besançon. Monsieur Rênal also wants to send Julian to the seminary in order to avoid a public scandal over Julien’s relationship with Madame de Rênal, and in order to prevent Julien from becoming a tutor at Monsieur Valenod’s house.

Madame de Rênal feels guilty about her relationship with Julien, and becomes increasingly remorseful and penitent.

Julien meets his friend Fouqué before traveling to the seminary. Fouqué is a timber merchant and offers to make Julien a partner in his business but Julien does not accept the offer.

Julien becomes a student in the seminary at Besançon, and gradually realizes that he is unaware of the internal politics of the religious community. He discovers that the seminary is a place of deception and hypocrisy, but he becomes a friend of Father Pirard, the fair-minded and unselfish director of the seminary. Father Pirard is rather stern and severe, but differs from the other clergy in that he is scrupulous and truthful.

Father Pirard loses his position as director, because he has supported the Marquis de la Mole in a lawsuit against the Abbé de Frilair, a clever and ambitious man who has a powerful position in the church hierarchy. Father Pirard finds a position for Julien as a secretary for the Marquis de la Mole.

At the house of the Marquis de la Mole in Paris, Julien is able to acquire sophistication and to learn the manners of aristocratic society. He gradually gains the confidence of the Marquis, and is entrusted with managing the Marquis's estates in Brittany and Normandy. However, Julien secretly falls in love with the Marquis’s daughter, Mathilde.

Mathilde is proud and arrogant, beautiful and intelligent. She is bored with the rigid conventionality of society, and feels that she can relieve her boredom by having an affair with Julien. She dreams of romantic passion and of a heroic, unconquerable love which can surmount all obstacles.

Mathilde feels that she can show boldness and greatness of heart by daring to fall in love with a man who is far below her in social position. But, after she has spent two nights with Julien, she decides that it is beneath her dignity to be in love with a man who is a secretary. Julien is wounded by her rejection of him.

The Marquis sends Julien on a mission to Strasbourg. On his mission, Julien meets a Russian nobleman named Prince Korasov whom he had previously met in London. Julien tells his friend Korasov about his dejection over being rejected by Mathilde, and Korasov advises him on how to win her love again.

When Julien returns to Paris, he does what Korasov has advised. He begins to court a virtuous widow named Madame de Fervaques. He writes letters to her, and neglects Mathilde.

Mathilde realizes how much Julien’s love means to her, and again falls in love with him. She finally submits to him, declaring that she is his servant, and that he is her master. Julien has triumphed, but he continues to treat her coldly in order to maintain his power over her.

Mathilde becomes pregnant, and when she reveals to her father that she intends to marry Julien, the Marquis becomes very angry. The Marquis had intended that his daughter would marry a nobleman. However, the Marquis finally decides that he will remedy the situation by making Julien wealthy and respectable.

The Marquis gives Julien a commission in the army. Julien becomes a Lieutenant of Hussars, with the title of Monsieur le Chevalier Julien Sorel de La Vernaye. But the Marquis receives a letter from Madame de Rênal, revealing her previous adulterous relationship with Julien. In her letter, Madame de Rênal accuses Julien of having seduced her in order to make a career for himself and in order to win a higher position in society.

The Marquis promptly forbids any marriage between Mathilde and Julien. Julien’s ambitions for wealth and power are destroyed, and in anger he returns to Verrieres, where he shoots Madame de Rênal, while she is praying in church.

Julien is arrested, and taken to prison. He thinks that he has killed Madame de Rênal, and admits that he is guilty. But she has not been killed. One of the bullets that he fired went through her hat, and the other hit her in the shoulder. She slowly recovers from her wound. Her love for Julien is reawakened.

Mathilde is still passionately in love with Julien. Mathilde comes to Verrières, and tries to bribe the Abbé de Frilair, who has power over the members of the jury. But Julien is put on trial for attempted murder, and is found guilty, receiving a sentence of death.

Julien and Madame de Rênal have fallen in love again. He has lost his passion for Mathilde, although Mathilde worships him.

As the novel ends, Julien faces his death. He is guillotined, and after his execution, Mathilde takes his severed head, and buries it in a cave. Mathilde has decorated the cave with marble, so that it becomes for her a shrine which represents her love for him.

Three days later, Madame de Rênal dies, while embracing her children.

The Red and the Black is the story of a young man’s ambition to achieve wealth and power. While the novel is very melodramatic, it provides an interesting critique of nineteenth-century French society. It also represents an important development in the history of modern fiction, in that it is an intensely psychological novel.

Stendhal gives extraordinary attention to the conflicting motivations of his characters. He describes their faults and virtues with a tone of sympathetic but penetrating irony.

Julien Sorel is an opportunist, who thinks that he has a duty to achieve power and glory. Julien thinks of himself as an extraordinary man, like Napoleon, and believes that he is beyond any ordinary limitation. He adopts a philosophy that 'the end justifies the means.' He believes that the extraordinary man, who has a brave and noble heart, has the right to take any action to reach his goal.

Julien says, in the penultimate chapter of the novel, that there is no such thing as ‘natural law.’ He believes that an action becomes unlawful only when there is a particular law forbidding it, and that the only thing that is natural is the struggle for power and survival.

Julien resents his low social position, and the condescension with which he is treated by the aristocracy. He is angered by their sense of superiority. He feels humiliated whenever he has to confront his own lack of wealth and sophistication. At the same time, he wants to live like the aristocrats whom he disdains. He is fascinated by the life of the wealthy and powerful.

Julien expects the worst from people, and suspects others of having their own self-interest as their only motive for helping him.At the same time, he seeks to use people for his own personal reasons, to help him gain a sense of power. This reflects the ambivalence in his character.

When Julien falls in love with Madame de Rênal, his love becomes a form of ambition to have power and control over an aristocratic and beautiful woman. When he falls in love with Mathilde de la Mole, his love again becomes a form of amibition to have power and control.

He decides that the difference between the love of Madame de Rênal and the love of Mathilde de la Mole is that the former tries to find reasons for doing what her heart demands, while the latter lets her heart be moved only after being given good reasons that it should be moved. This duality in the temperament of Julien’s lovers reflects the duality in his own character.

Julien unsuccessfully struggles between emotion and reason, between spontaneity and calculation, between truthfulness and pretense, between sincere devotion and religious hypocrisy. He is divided between the red and the black. The duality of the red and the black represents the conflict in his character between sincerity and hypocrisy, idealism and cyncism, humility and pride, love and ambition.This conflict in his character brings about his downfall.