8
PARTISAN REVIEW
love-theme in Stendhal. And here the first of the two obstacles in
the way of the hero is one that loomed .quite large at times for
Beyle himself-poverty. To consider Julien's relations with the
two women in the novel without taking account of his origins is
to miss much that explains their. peculiar character and develop–
ment. Julien, alone of these agitated young men, is of lowly birth
-the son of a carpenter who knocks him about brutally and sells
him to the local representative of the rising
haute bourgeoisie,
M.
de Renal. Apparently he has also been knocked about by his many
older brothers, and has never known the protection of maternal
love. At the moment that we meet him he is steeped in Napoleon's
memoirs and Rousseau's
Confessions.
And the physical descrip–
tion is revealing enough to he quoted in full:
His cheeks were flushed, his eyes downcast. He was a slim
youth of eighteen or nineteen, weak in appearance, with irregular
but delicate features and an aquiline nose. His large dark eyes,
which, in moments of calm, suggested a reflective, fiery spirit,
were animated at this instant with an expression of the most
ferocious hatred. Hair of a dark chestnut, growing very low,
gave him a narrow brow, .and in moments of anger a wicked air.
Among the innumerable varieties of the human countenance,
there is perhaps none that is more strikingly characteristic. A
slim and shapely figure betokened suppleness rather than
strength. In his childhood, his extremely pensive air and marked
pallor had given his father the idea that he would not live, or
would live only to be a burden upon his family. An obj ect of
contempt to the rest of the household, he hated his brothers and
father; in the games on Sunday, on the public square, he was
invariably beaten.
Of what this countenance is actually characteristic Stendal does
not mention; but it is easy to detect
in
it the compounded linea–
ments of the Man of Feeling-the "delicate features," the "marked
pallor," and the "pensive air"-and the Satanic hero-the fiery
dark eyes, the wicked dark hair, and even the aquiline nose. By
1830 the process of assimilation between them had been com–
pleted; and in Julien we can see unmistakably how the hyper–
trophied sensibility of the former merges into the neo-Machia–
vellian diabolism of the latter.
In the de Renal household Julien is motivated neither by a
thirst for experience nor by simple material ambition but by what
may be called a sense of duty. The briskly conceived campaign
