Who He Is
Mayor of Verrières, owner of the nail factory, who made his fortune in the iron trade, and husband of Madame de Rênal. In Chapter 2 of Book I, his greatness is measured in walls built and plane trees pruned twice a year, by the yardstick the narrator writes in capitals in that chapter.
The narrator hands over the key to the town in a single capitalized sentence, which works as an inner epigraph to Chapter II:
Here is the great word that decides everything in Verrières: MAKE A PROFIT. In itself it represents the habitual thought of more than three quarters of the inhabitants.
Trajectory
In Chapter 3 of Book I, the decision to hire Julien Sorel as tutor arises from the rivalry for prestige with Valenod.
The decision to hire Julien Sorel, in Chapter III, comes less from affection than from the rivalry for prestige between the town's two strong men:
Valenod is very proud of the two fine Norman horses he has just bought for his caleche. But he has no tutor for his sons.
In the negotiation over his son's salary, Father Sorel comes out ahead.
Ch. V. In the negotiation over the son's salary, the Father Sorel gets the better of the mayor:
the peasant's cunning beat the cunning of the rich man, who has no need of it to live.
At their first meeting, he tries to test the tutor's Latin with a line of Horace, and Julien dodges by invoking his vocation.
Ch. VI. At the first meeting, Julien uses his vocation as a shield against the Latin examination by Monsieur de Rênal:
Monsieur de Rênal's self-esteem left him uneasy; instead of thinking about examining the tutor, he concentrated on searching his memory for a few Latin words; at last he managed to say a line of Horace. Julien knew only the Latin of his Bible. He replied, knitting his brows: - The holy ministry to which I am destined has forbidden me to read so profane a poet.
He refuses his wife's idea of giving Julien clothes. Later in the same chapter, when she tells him that Julien refused the louis she had offered him, he reproaches her for tolerating a servant's refusal and quotes a remark attributed to the Prince de Condé about Besenval's Memoirs: "All these people are our servants."
Ch. VII. Madame de Rênal and her husband, faced with Julien's poverty:
Julien's name and the feeling of a pure, intellectual joy were synonyms for her. Tormented by the thought of the young man's poverty, Madame de Rênal spoke to her husband about giving him clothes. - What nonsense! he replied. - Not at all! Give presents to a man with whom we are perfectly satisfied? And what good would it do us? Only if he became careless would it be necessary to spur his zeal.
His wife likes him above all when he talks about his plans for their three sons.
Madame de Rênal, who enjoys hearing her husband talk about the future of their sons, accepts without noticing the rule of closed careers that governs the whole town:
She liked Monsieur de Rênal especially when he spoke to her of his plans for the children, destining one of them for the army, the second for the magistracy and the third for the Church.
The threat hanging over him is to his office, and he speaks about politics with anger.
The threat hanging over Monsieur de Rênal is not only financial, it is political:
Monsieur de Rênal spoke about politics with anger: two or three manufacturers in Verrières were becoming decidedly richer than he was and meant to challenge him at the elections.
Faced with one of his rude remarks, the wife feels for the first time a desire for revenge.
Ch. IX. Faced with her husband's rudeness:
For the first time in her life, Madame de Rênal felt a kind of desire for revenge against her husband.
In Chapter 19 of Book I, when their son Stanislas falls ill, the wife throws herself at his feet to confess everything, and is stopped only because he finds her "romantic" and goes to sleep. In Chapter 21 of Book I, after the anonymous letter, he spends the night weighing whether to kill his wife, drive her out, or pretend to know nothing. He even examines the hunting knife, but the thought of blood frightens him, and the calculation of fortune and reputation wins out.
Monsieur de Rênal spends the night weighing whether to kill his wife, drive her out, or pretend to know nothing; the calculation of fortune and reputation wins, not passion nor forgiveness:
I am used to Louise [...]; if I were free to marry tomorrow, I would not find anyone to replace her.
The same reverie, in which he goes as far as examining the hunting knife, names the safety net that would protect him if the affair ended in blood:
The Penal Code is on my side and, whatever happens, our congregation and my friends on the jury will save me.
In Chapter 21 of Book I, he vents his anger on his wife.
Monsieur de Rênal venting his anger on his wife:
Your negligence, your laziness allow only the activity of chasing butterflies, weak creatures that we have the misfortune to have in our families!... Madame de Rênal let him talk, and he talked a great deal; he let his anger out, as they say in the region.
The wife dictates to Julien how to make a second anonymous letter, with words cut out of a book and pasted onto paper from Valenod's own stationery, so that her husband will believe the author of the first letter is the rival.
In Chapter 1 of Book II, already outside the main action, his name returns in the stagecoach to Paris: Julien cites him as an example, Falcoz comments on him, and Saint-Giraud places him at the head of a succession of provincial kingdoms.
Bonaparte, may heaven strike him down with his royalist trappings, made possible the kingdom of the Rênals and the Chélans, which brought in the kingdom of the Valenods and the Maslons.
In Book II he reappears from a distance: his wife had promised him she would not leave her bed, yet she goes to Besançon all the same (Chapter XL), and three days after their reunion in prison he sends the carriage and orders her to return to Verrières (Chapter XLIII).
Themes Embodied
The standard themes that run through him are Money and wealth, Honor and reputation, and Politics.
On the night of the hunting knife, Monsieur de Rênal decides the marriage by the same yardstick by which Verrières decides everything: the phrase with which he keeps his wife speaks of custom and substitution, and the protection he counts on is that of the congregation and his friends on the jury. The clerical network that, at the end of the book, decides Julien's jury appears here for the first time as a guarantee, in the mind of a cuckolded husband.
Relationships
- Madame de Rênal: his wife, whom he calls Louise and whose confession he does not hear.
- Julien Sorel: the tutor he hires so as not to fall behind Valenod.
- Valenod: the rival in town, to whom the second anonymous letter attributes the first.
- Father Sorel: who beats him in the negotiation over his son's salary.
- Abbé Chélan: placed beside him by Saint-Giraud in the "kingdom of the Rênals and the Chélans".