67 pages • 2-hour read
The Red and the Black
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Symbols & Motifs
Boniface de la Mole
In The Red and the Black, the figure of Mathilde’s ancestor, Boniface de La Mole, is a symbol of the romantic myth of aristocratic heroism that both Mathilde and Julien seek to emulate. Boniface de La Mole, Julien is told, was a 16th-century French nobleman and a supposed lover of Queen Marguerite de Valois. He was beheaded for allegedly plotting against King Charles IX, and legend holds that Marguerite preserved his severed head out of love and devotion. Julien learns of the story when Mathilde appears in mourning dress on the anniversary of her ancestor’s tragic death. In this moment, the extent to which the family legend endures shows the aristocratic surroundings into which Julien is entering. He is a parochial figure, the son of a peasant, and now he is dining at the table of a family directly descended from important historical figures. The way in which Mathilde chooses to honor the death of her ancestor (while her other family members are indifferent) symbolizes the extent to which she is captured by the past. Mathilde may not enjoy how the patriarchal values of the Bourbon Restoration limit her potential, but she treasures the drama and the tragedy of the past. She is beholden to this past, seeing herself as the modern reincarnation of a heroic woman from history, and she envisions Julien as a similarly tragic and noble figure. As her father works to maintain an old social order, she works to keep the same stories of the aristocratic past alive. Mathilde may view herself as a rebel or an iconoclast, but she is as devoted to the family history as everyone around her. Though she chafes against the aristocracy’s rigid expectations, she is a part of it in a way that Julien will never be.
The tale of Boniface de La Mole becomes a symbolic reference point for Mathilde, particularly when Julien is imprisoned and sentenced to death. In this moment, Mathilde has everything she has ever wanted. Her love is forbidden by her society, and she has the opportunity to performatively show the world the extent to which she has inherited her ancestors’ flair for drama. She can finally become the tragic heroine of a love story, a legendary name to be passed on to future generations. She wants to merge herself with the symbolism of Boniface de la Mole. In a broad sense, the repetition of this tragic scenario shows the extent to which she (and the other characters) are caught in a constant cycle of despair, tragedy, and violence. The symbolic recurrence of the Boniface story echoes the way in which the French Revolution and the emergence of Napoleon disrupted the social order, only for the Bourbon Restoration to bring it back in a diminished, inauthentic, and precarious form. The cycle of violence and tragedy repeats on the historical stage on a social and on an individual level. However, as Karl Marx would remark in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, published 20 years after The Red and the Black, history repeats itself “the first time as tragedy, the second as farce” (10). Just as Marx saw the reign of Napoleon’s nephew as a farcical repetition of the elder Napoleon’s rule, Stendhal depicts the Bourbon restoration as a farcical and doomed attempt to turn back the historical clock. Mathilde’s attempt to reenact her ancestor’s tragic love story symbolizes this larger farce: Julien never loved her, and she loved only the image of herself as a romantic heroine in love.
Napoleon Bonaparte
Napoleon Bonaparte rose to power during the French Revolution, gaining prominence as a brilliant military commander. In 1799, he seized control of the French government in a coup d’état, establishing himself as First Consul and later proclaiming himself Emperor in 1804. He introduced wide-ranging reforms, including the Napoleonic Code, centralized administration, and educational institutions, while expanding France’s influence across Europe through a series of military victories. At the height of his power, Napoleon controlled much of continental Europe, until a coalition of European powers gradually defeated him, leading to his abdication in 1814 and exile to Elba, an island off the coast of Italy, directly between the Italian mainland and Napoleon’s native Corsica. He briefly returned to power in 1815 and was exiled again, this time to the much more remote island of Saint Helena, over 1,000 miles from the west coast of Africa, where he died in 1821. By the time in which The Red and the Black is set, in the late 1820s, Napoleon has been dead for several years. In the mind of the young Julien Sorel, Napoleon is more than just a man. He is a symbol of social change and progress, representing an era of social mobility that is now in the past. As such, Julien—the son of a peasant—turns Napoleon into a symbol of his ambition. Napoleon represents the towering audacity that is required to change the world. To Julien, Napoleon represents everything that he must do if he is to achieve his ambition. This becomes evident in the way that Julien plots minor social encounters as military maneuvers, employing the symbolism of Napoleon to make himself a conqueror of social class structures as Napoleon conquered Europe.
The world Julien inhabits is not the world of Napoleon. That world has been replaced by a revival of the old social order, one which is much more rigid and much less suited to the needs of an ambitious young peasant. Whereas Julien might have previously raised himself via the military (the titular Red), he must now find a different option. He settles on the priesthood (the titular Black), hoping that the Church can be a vehicle for social change. Yet the society he inhabits is actively hostile to this kind of social mobility. While Napoleon might be a positive symbol for Julien, many of the aristocrats he encounters view Napoleon as an ominous or malicious force. The marquis, for example, remembers fleeing France during the Emigration; the French Revolution was a threat to his fortune, his status, and his life. Only the defeat of Napoleon allowed him to resume his lofty position in society, so Napoleon represents everything that must be crushed and defeated in order to maintain the status quo. The symbolic meaning of Napoleon changes throughout the novel, depending on whether the character benefits from or is marginalized by the status quo.
The conflict in symbolic meaning results in Julien being forced to hide his devout Bonapartism. Julien may revere Napoleon, he may believe in Napoleon more than he believes in God, yet he knows that he must obscure this devotion in order to elevate his status. His hidden devotion to Napoleon and his willingness to hide his true feelings from the world represent his dedication to his ambition. He is willing to lie to the wealthy and the powerful if there is the slimmest chance that he may ingratiate himself to them. Julien’s willingness to disavow his hero in front of the world reflects his belief in the insincerity and the vapidity of the society he inhabits. Much as he believes that most priests only pretend to believe in God for social advancement, he is willing to pretend to believe in the aristocracy if it means he can become part of it. He sees no problem with lying about his political beliefs because he believes that everyone around him is lying to themselves on a constant basis. In this way, the manner in which Julien hides his actual beliefs while denouncing his hero Napoleon to anyone who will listen becomes a commentary on how Julien sees the world. He can believe in Napoleon as a hero, while labelling him as a villain, symbolizing the extent to which Julien does not believe in the authentic expression of honest ideals. There is simply no benefit, he reasons, in telling the truth. Napoleon comes to symbolize Julien’s cynical view of society.
Epigraphs
In The Red and the Black, Stendhal famously includes false epigraphs throughout the novel. These short quotations appear at the beginning of each chapter; many of them are either fabricated or misattributed. These epigraphs serve more than a decorative or stylistic purpose; they function symbolically, shaping the reader’s interpretation of the narrative and revealing Stendhal’s ironic stance toward literature, society, and truth. The false epigraphs mock the convention of using quotations to lend authority or legitimacy to a text. By inventing or misattributing them, Stendhal draws attention to the artificiality of literary devices and undermines the reader’s expectations of authenticity. This aligns with his broader critique of social hypocrisy and performance in The Red and the Black, wherein characters often adopt roles or personas to advance within a rigid and corrupt society. Just as Julien disguises his ambition under the mask of piety or romantic idealism, the epigraphs disguise fiction as fact, exposing the performative nature of both literature and life.
Symbolically, the epigraphs mirror the novel’s tension between appearance and reality. They often offer a tone or moral that contrasts sharply with the events of the chapter they precede, thereby highlighting the gap between surface and substance. This technique invites readers to question not only the integrity of the epigraphs but also the motives and sincerity of the characters. The novel becomes a space of instability, where truth is elusive and irony is ever-present. The false epigraphs also reflect Stendhal’s ambivalence toward Romanticism and his movement toward Realism. While the quotations often adopt a Romantic or moralizing tone, their falsity undercuts the seriousness they pretend to convey. Through these false epigraphs, Stendhal critiques the moral platitudes and sentimental rhetoric common in Romantic literature. The reader is forced to confront the constructed nature of literary conventions and to engage more critically with the text.
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