Chapter summary
Mathilde de La Mole reigns over the salon with epigrams and is bored by the identical letters she receives from Croisenois, Caylus and the others, comparing them unfavorably to the acts of greatness of Imperial times. Amusing herself walking with Julien Sorel, she decides in a flash of joy that she is in love, and concludes that only a heroic love will free her from the boredom of her class.
Analysis
Mathilde concludes that she loves because the walk with Julien amuses her, and because the boredom of her class calls for a heroic love: the feeling comes after the decision, and the choice falls on the only man around her who lacks the birth she despises. It can be read as a passion recognized late. Or as the project of someone who needs an obstacle in order to feel.
Mathilde's love is born as a project before it is born as a feeling: she decides to love because she needs a great passion to escape the boredom of her class, and the decision falls on the man who had already occupied her for days, because he meets the requirements (poverty, pride, energy, lack of birth). It is the same cold logic of the salon, turned against the salon itself.
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