What It Is
The two colors of the title are read as two careers: the red is the uniform, which made a man a general at thirty in the time of Napoleon Bonaparte, and the black is the cassock, what remained after the Restoration for anyone who wants to rise without being born to privilege.
Where It Appears
In Chapter 3 of Book I, Monsieur de Rênal divides his sons among the three official doors of the period, and his wife enjoys listening to him.
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.
After the age of fourteen, Julien turns his admiration for Napoleon into a feigned vocation for the priesthood, when he sees the justice of the peace disgrace himself out of fear of displeasing a young vicar.
The dispute over the four marble columns of Verrières' new church, which Julien admires, names the power that decides who is right in town:
they became famous throughout the region, for the deadly hatred they aroused between the justice of the peace and the young vicar sent from Besançon, regarded as a spy for the congregation.
The sentence that sums up the axis of the whole book does not use the words "red" and "black", but it is them:
Nowadays we see priests of forty drawing a salary of a hundred thousand francs, that is, three times more than Napoleon's famous division generals. [...] One must be a priest.
In Chapter 18 of Book I, Madame de Rênal gets Julien out of his black clothes for a day, and he parades before the king in the sky-blue uniform of the honor guard.
Madame de Rênal uses all the influence she has to get Julien out of his black clothes (see the uniform and the cassock) for one day, and gets more than she imagined:
she obtained first from Monsieur Moirod, and then from the sub-governor de Maugiron, that Julien be named honor guard, to the detriment of five or six sons of very wealthy manufacturers, at least two of whom were of exemplary piety.
At the seminary, Julien is exempt from military conscription as a seminarian, and he hears the masons of the cloister speak of the time when the uniform was open to all.
Julien overhears, by chance in the garden, the masons of the cloister discussing conscription, and their talk names without euphemism what the Restoration closed off:
In the old days, that's how it was! A mason became an officer, became a general; you saw it happen.
As he walks away, Julien repeats under his breath the same nostalgia as the masons, proof that his Bonapartism is not a peculiarity of reading but a living feeling in the street:
The only king the people remember!
In Chapter 7 of Book II, clothing divides Julien's day in the La Mole house: a blue suit in the evening, a black suit in the morning.
If one can become attached to a fine cocker spaniel, thought the marquis, why am I so ashamed of becoming attached to this little priest? He is original. I treat him like a son. Well then! Where is the impropriety?
In Chapter 34 of Book II, the marquis gives him a lieutenant's commission in the hussars, and in Chapter 35 of Book II two days suffice for the rank to seem too little.
Refrain from further follies; here is a lieutenant's commission in the hussars for the gentleman cavalier Julien Sorel de La Vernaye. [...] Let him depart within the next twenty-four hours to present himself at Strasbourg, where his regiment is stationed.
At Strasbourg, two days after the commission, victory is no longer enough:
Scarcely a lieutenant, through favor, and for only two days, he already calculated that to be commander-in-chief at thirty at the latest, like all the great generals, it was necessary to be more than a lieutenant at twenty-three.
What It Means
Julien states the choice between the two colors as cold calculation, not vocation; in Chapter 5 of Book I he chooses the cassock out of calculation, not faith, and the whole book will exact payment for that choice.
The uniform Julien ever wears never has the color of the title: that of the honor guard is sky blue, and the evening dress in Paris is blue. Black, by contrast, is everyday wear, the seminary cassock and the secretary's morning black suit. The only true uniform, that of the hussar, arrives at the end, and lasts until Madame de Rênal's letter.
Relationships
- Standard themes: Ambition, Social class, Religion.
- Characters: Julien Sorel, Marquis de La Mole.
- Neighboring symbols: the Memorial of Saint Helena and the seminary at Besançon.