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红与黑英语读后感( 二 )


The paper's opening sentence：“If your characters do not talk about politics, they are not the French in 1830.” is the famous sentence in The Red and The Black. The material of The Red and The Black is based on a realistic event that a tutor killed her hostess in 1827. When Stendhal read the story in the newspaper, he adapted it and wrote the long bildungsroman novel The Red and The Black. The work, previously titled Julien, then, changed into The Red and The Black. The Red symbolizes many things, the uniform of the Napoleon era, Mrs. Renal’s blood, revolution and contribution by the common people. The Black also stands for robes of priests, Martel’s mourning apparel and the plot of church. The subtitle, A Chronicle of the 19th Century, definitely states the time background. Thus it can be seen, Stendhal consciously wrote this political tint novel about society of Bourbon Restoration. The Red and The Black is the first critical realism novel in Europe.
The Red and the Black includes two volumes. It mainly tells the story of Julien Sorel’s life in a monarchic society of fixed social class.The clue of this book is about Julien Sorel’s life experience. From the venal town to the capital Paris, the ghastly seminary to the royalist, love and religious activities to the secret political conferences, The Red and the Black describes a picture of the society under control of Charles X of France.
Book I Julien Sorel is an ambitious son of a carpenter in the Verrières village, in Franche-Comté，France, who would rather read and daydream about the glory days of Napoleon's long-disbanded army. In the event, Julien Sorel becomes an acolyte. Later, the local Catholic prelate secures him a post as the tutor for the children of Monsieur de Rênal, the mayor of Verrières. He falls in love with Monsieur de Rênal’s wife; it ends badly when exposed to the village, by her chambermaid, Elisa. Then, Julien goes to a seminary in Besan?on, which he finds intellectually stifling and pervaded with social cliques. Disgusted by the Church’s political machinations, Julien recommends himself as private secretary to the diplomat Marquis de la Mole, a Roman Catholic legitimist.
Book II chronicles the time leading to the July Revolution of 1830, and Julien Sorel’s Parisian life, as an employee of the de la Mole family. Despite moving among high society, the family and their friends, condescend to Julien for being an uncouth plebeian — his intellectual talents notwithstanding. In his boundlessly ambitious rise in the world, Julien perceives the materialism and hypocrisy important to the elite of Parisian society, and that the counter-revolutionary temper of the time renders it impossible for well-born men of superior intellect and esthetic sensibility to progressively participate in the public affairs of the nation with any success. Meanwhile, in the preceding months, the Marquis’s bored daughter, Mathilde de la Mole, had become emotionally torn, between her romantic attraction to Julien, for his admirable personal and intellectual qualities, and her social repugnance at becoming sexually intimate with a lower-class man. At first, he finds her unattractive, but his interest is piqued, by her attentions and the admiration she inspires in others; twice, she seduces and rejects him, leaving him in a miasma of despair, self-doubt, and happiness. Only during his secret mission does he gain the key to winning her affections. Consequently, Mathilde sincerely falls in love with Julien, eventually revealing to him that she carries his child; yet, whilst he was on diplomatic mission in England, she became officially engaged to Monsieur de Croisenois, an amiable, rich young man, heir to a duchy.

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