Who He Is
Director of the poorhouse of Verrières and rival of Monsieur de Rênal in the town's status symbols. At the end of the book he is a baron, named governor, and presides over the reading of the verdict that condemns Julien Sorel.
The poorhouse that Valenod runs in Verrières is a real institution of the period:
The shelters for beggars, created by Louis XVI and abolished with the Revolution, were revived under Napoleon in 1808, and gradually abolished under the Restoration. In 1830 there were only six of them in the country.
Trajectory
In Chapter 3 of Book I, it is the purchase of his horses that leads Monsieur de Rênal to hire a tutor.
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.
Julien, installed as tutor, despises the rich for their hypocrisy and their greed, above all Monsieur Valenod.
In Chapter 19 of Book I, the maid Elisa, spiteful, hands him the affair between Julien and Madame de Rênal, and an anonymous letter arrives. In Chapter 21 of Book I, the second letter, made by Julien at the behest of Madame de Rênal, is pasted onto paper from Valenod's own stationery. In Chapter 22 of Book I, at dinner at his house, Julien thinks of the prisoners on the other side of the wall.
At lunch at Valenod's house, director of the poorhouse:
Julien, already very ill at ease, thought that on the other side of the wall of the dining room were poor prisoners whose portion of meat had perhaps been taken to pay for all this tasteless luxury with which they wanted to stun him. Perhaps they are hungry right now, he said to himself; his heart tightened, he could not eat, and he could hardly speak.
They are no longer singing that unpleasant song. [...] Well, of course! [...] I had the vagabonds silenced.
The contrast with the Rênal house appears with complete clarity at the dinner at Valenod's house, still in Verrières, which already anticipates the seminary (see the seminary at Besançon): by asking that a prisoner who was singing be silenced, Valenod exposes the same machinery that Julien will find in Besançon, power exercised over those who cannot answer back.
In Chapter 1 of Book II, Saint-Giraud places his name in the 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 Chapter 41 of Book II, Abbé de Frilair names him as the instrument who drags the rest of the jury toward the agreed vote.
Among the twelve persons charged with examining whether the crime of my protégé is beyond dispute and, above all, whether there was premeditation, I count on six friends devoted to my cause, and I have let them understand that it depends on them to bring me to the bishopric.
It is the missing piece needed to understand fully Julien's speech from the dock: when he tells the jurors that he is not being judged by his peers, the jury before him is no longer the impartial body that the law envisaged, but a majority worked on by a cleric in exchange for an ecclesiastical post, and it is Valenod who breaks the agreement, delighting in condemning his former rival now that he has the governorship in his pocket. The class accusation in the speech has, beneath it, a very concrete class manipulation, and it is this that turns against Julien.
Already named governor, he presides over the reading of the verdict "with a grave and theatrical step".
Themes Embodied
The standard themes that run through him are Power, Money and wealth, and Justice and law.
Valenod stands at both ends of Julien's relationship with Verrières: at the dinner where Julien cannot eat, thinking of the prisoners on the other side of the wall, and at the session where it is he who pronounces the sentence. Between one scene and the other comes his rise in rank, from director of the poorhouse to baron and governor.
Relationships
- Monsieur de Rênal: his rival for prestige in Verrières.
- Julien Sorel: the tutor who has despised him since Verrières, and whose sentence he reads.
- Madame de Rênal: whose affair reaches him through the maid Elisa.
- Abbé de Frilair: the vicar general who uses him as an instrument on the jury.