Social Class

The Theme in the Work

Verrières has a yardstick of its own, and the narrator writes it in capitals in chapter 2 of Book I: making a profit. Monsieur de Rênal buys land and raises walls to be respected (ch. 1), hires a tutor because Valenod has just bought two Norman horses (ch. 3), and treats Julien Sorel as a servant (ch. 7). Julien, the son of a sawyer who scorns his reading (ch. 4), enters the house refusing to be a servant and asking with whom he will eat (ch. 5), and hates the society that admits him at the far end of the table (ch. 7).

The border runs through love as well. When he calls her children "so well-born," Julien feels that in the eyes of Madame de Rênal he is not (ch. 13), and when a word of praise for Napoleon escapes him, she frowns because it sounds like a servant's thinking (ch. 17). In Paris the yardstick shifts from money to birth: the Marquis de La Mole is dismayed by a spelling mistake (Book II, ch. 2), the salon turns every living idea into rudeness (ch. 4), and a blue suit is enough to make him, at night, the younger brother of a count, while in the morning, in black, he becomes a secretary again (ch. 7).

Mathilde de La Mole reverses the yardstick without abolishing it: for her, noble birth takes away the strength of character (ch. 8), and it is because Julien is not noble that love stops being an unequal alliance (ch. 12). When the pregnancy forces the marquis to choose, he cannot bear to see his daughter called Madame Sorel instead of duchess (ch. 33), and he solves the problem by inventing a name, La Vernaye (ch. 34), and an origin in which the carpenter appears only as the man who looked after the boy (ch. 35). At the trial, Julien names the line that the novel has drawn since Verrières: he is not judged by his peers, and they want to punish him for his origin (ch. 41). In prison, his father, Father Sorel, still presents him with the bill for his education (ch. 44).

The book shows two yardsticks, and Julien fits neither. In Verrières talent is worth something as long as it turns a profit; in Paris it is worth something as long as it disguises itself as birth. The novel rejects the way out that the age promised: neither provincial money nor merit put at the service of nobility erases the line, and the only time Julien faces it head-on is when he gives up defending himself. His speech to the jury is his first public utterance without calculation, and it is the one that condemns him.

Where It Appears

• Book I, chapter 1: A small town: Rênal, the mayor and owner of the nail factory, buys old Sorel's land at an exorbitant price to complete his garden, and the peasant still wrings six thousand francs out of him.
• Book I, chapter 2: A mayor: The narrator writes in capitals the word that decides everything in Verrières, MAKING A PROFIT, and Rênal, criticized for pruning the plane trees, replies that he likes shade and that a tree that does not make a profit has no reason to exist.
• Book I, chapter 4: A father and a son: Old Sorel, a peasant, scorns in Julien an intelligence applied to reading rather than to manual labor, and the young man's brothers also despise him.
• Book I, chapter 5: A negotiation: Julien refuses to be treated as a servant and asks with whom he will eat, and in the haggling over wages the cunning of old Sorel, the peasant, defeats that of the rich Rênal.
• Book I, chapter 6: Boredom: Julien compares Rênal's house with his father's, which beat him the day before, and thinks how happy these rich people are.
• Book I, chapter 7: Elective affinities: Julien hates the society that admits him at the far end of the table, and Rênal, who calls him a servant, refuses to give him a present, because one does not give presents to someone who serves properly.
• Book I, chapter 10: A great heart: Julien wins his raise by threatening to leave, and the tutor's victory over the master comes from the mayor's fear of losing him to Valenod.
• Book I, chapter 13: The lace stockings: By calling Madame de Rênal's children well-born, Julien feels that in her eyes he is not well-born.
• Book I, chapter 17: The deputy mayor: The Napoleonic outburst sounds like a servant's thinking to Madame de Rênal, and Julien concludes that she was raised in enemy territory.
• Book I, chapter 18: A king in Verrières: Through Madame de Rênal's influence, Julien, a carpenter's son, is named honor guard in place of the sons of rich manufacturers, and the town is outraged.
• Book I, chapter 19: To think is to suffer: Faced with Madame de Rênal's remorse, Julien sees greatness of feeling and wonders how, poor, ignorant and coarse in manner, he could have inspired such love.
• Book I, chapter 22: Ways of acting in 1830: At Valenod's lunch, Julien thinks that on the other side of the wall are the poor prisoners, and he weeps when the host says he has ordered the prisoner who was singing to be silenced.
• Book I, chapter 24: A capital: Julien thinks that for a poor wretch without patrons or money, there is not much difference between the seminary and the prison.
• Book II, chapter 1: The pleasures of the country: Facing the name of the La Mole mansion engraved in black marble over the door, Julien thinks the nobles are so afraid of the Jacobins that they see a Robespierre behind every hedge.
• Book II, chapter 2: Entry into society: The shoemaker registers Julien as Mr. Julien de Sorel, and the marquis de La Mole is dismayed to see him spell the word "isso" with a single s.
• Book II, chapter 3: The first steps: Despite the kindness of the La Mole family, Julien soon feels isolated among them, and his blunders delight the servants.
• Book II, chapter 4: The La Mole mansion: In the La Mole salon, no income or decoration can defeat the rule that turns any living idea into rudeness.
• Book II, chapter 6: Manner of pronunciation: To escape ridicule, Beauvoisis spreads the story that Julien is a natural son of a friend of the marquis, a rumor the marquis decides to make consistent.
• Book II, chapter 7: A gout attack: Dressed in the blue suit, Julien is treated at night as the younger brother of the Count de Chaulnes; in the morning, in black, he becomes a secretary again.
• Book II, chapter 8: Which decoration is the most honorable: Mathilde concludes that noble birth takes away the strength of character without which no one gets himself condemned to death.
• Book II, chapter 9: The ball: Altamira tells Julien that at this dinner the two of them will be the only ones without a stain of blood, and that Julien will be despised as a man of the people, an intruder in good society.
• Book II, chapter 12: He'll be a Danton: Mathilde thinks that if Julien were noble, her love would be only an unequal alliance, without the enormous difficulty to be overcome that characterizes great passions.
• Book II, chapter 13: A conspiracy: On receiving Mathilde's declaration, Julien rejoices that the poor carpenter from the Jura has beaten Croisenois.
• Book II, chapter 32: The tiger: Pregnant, Mathilde writes to her father taking the blame and proposing to live with Julien in Switzerland as Madame Sorel.
• Book II, chapter 33: The hell of weakness: The marquis, furious, cannot bear the thought that his daughter will be called Madame Sorel and not duchess.
• Book II, chapter 34: A man of wit: The marquis de La Mole makes Julien the chevalier Julien Sorel de La Vernaye, with a lieutenant's commission in the hussars, and orders him to leave for Strasbourg within twenty-four hours.
• Book II, chapter 41: The trial: In court, Julien tells the jurors that he does not belong to their class and that they want to punish him for his origin.
• Book II, chapter 44: Old Sorel comes to the prison and presents his son with the bill for food and education.

Passages

The provincial yardstick, written in capitals by the narrator:

The line appears within love itself, in Madame de Rênal's frown:

In Paris the yardstick is different, and no money can buy it:

Mathilde loves precisely the distance that the salon does not forgive:

And at the trial Julien names it before any defense: