On the back of my copy of Stendhal’s The Red and the Black (1830), novelist Doris Lessing, winner of the Nobel Prize for literature, says: “I was in my twenties when I found The Red and the Black – and a friend.”

It was the same for me – and I still think of the novel as a friend. It’s not because anything much good happens in it. The Red and the Black is a story of almost unrelenting hypocrisy and corruption. Rather, the friendship is with Stendhal himself – or at least his wry persona.

Stendhal leads us through the adventures of the passionate yet Machiavellian Julien Sorel, as Julien attempts to rise above his low beginnings in 1820s Restoration France. Despite being two centuries distant, Stendhal’s excoriating depiction of the cruelties of seduction, pious institutions and unprincipled ambition is evergreen.

For anyone bemused by such things in our own world, The Red and the Black might be just the friend you need.

A beguiling protagonist

Stendhal was the nom de plume of Marie-Henri Beyle (1783–1842). Born and raised in the regional city of Grenoble, Beyle rebelled against his conservative upbringing, attracted by the revolutionary energy of Napoleonic France.

In 1799, he left Grenoble for Paris, where he joined the army in 1800. He witnessed the fall of Napoleon in 1815 and the return of the old aristocracy, which closed off almost every path of advancement for men of modest birth.

The Red and the Black – Le Rouge et le Noir in the original French – denotes the two political factions during the Bourbon Restoration. The “Red” refers to the military uniform of the Napoleonic soldier and stands for the Liberals, who, like liberals today, support merit, business and progress. The “Black” refers to the cassock of the clergy and stands for the Ultra-royalists, who support … well, holding onto the power that had been challenged during the French Revolution and the Napoleonic era.

The Liberals include Julien, who has “extreme hatred” for the rich. They look better on paper. Yet both factions, and Julien himself, do not fare well.

The Red and the Black, while not as well known among English speakers, ranks among the very best French novels, alongside Marcel Proust’s À la Recherche du Temps Perdu, Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary and Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables.

Its success derives not so much from its account of the politics of Restoration France, but from the beguiling Julien. In the pantheon of fictional protagonists, he might be the very best instance of a despicable figure whom we sympathise with and, sometimes, even cheer along; others include Raskolnikov from Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, Humbert Humbert from Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita and, in contemporary popular culture, Don Draper from Mad Men and Walter White from Breaking Bad.

This is the novel’s supreme achievement. In inclining us to sympathise with the clear-sighted, emotional, yet........

© The Conversation