The Theme in the Work
Happiness, in the novel, almost never arrives where Julien Sorel looks for it. It appears in the gaps left by calculation: under the linden tree, when Madame de Rênal lets herself live and he forgets to pretend (Book I, ch. 9), and in the mountain grotto, where, alone and free of hypocrisy, he feels happier than he had ever been (ch. 12). When the conquest is achieved, on the contrary, disappointment comes, and Julien wonders whether being happy and being loved is only that (ch. 15). On the night of the ladder, before departing for Paris, the narrator separates divine happiness from the mere pleasure obtained by artifice (ch. 30).
Mathilde de La Mole is the figure of someone who has everything except happiness. At the ball she counts what fortune has given her, learning, wealth and youth, and concludes that what is lacking is precisely the essential (Book II, ch. 8); when she decides to love, she declares to herself the happiness of loving, as one makes a resolution (ch. 11).
The turn comes in prison. In the tower, Julien no longer thinks about what occupied him fifteen days earlier, and discovers that he was happy without knowing it (ch. 36); ambition dies and the memory of the happy days at Verrières and Vergy takes its place (ch. 39); smoking on the terrace, he is surprised that he has learned the art of enjoying life only now, as its end draws near (ch. 40). The reunion with Madame de Rênal wrings from him the sentence that closes the arc (ch. 43), and on her visits he says that ambition carried him far away just when he could have been happy in the woods of Vergy (ch. 45).
Stendhal defines happiness by the reverse of ambition: it is always in the place Julien left in order to climb, and it becomes visible only when there is nowhere left to climb. The grotto, the linden tree and the cell have in common the absence of an audience, and that is the condition the whole book denied him. It is not a morality of renunciation, because no one in the novel is happy through virtue; it is the recognition that calculation and happiness do not fit in the same time.
Where It Appears
- Book I, chapter 9: A night in the country: Under the linden tree, Madame de Rênal thinks of nothing and lets herself live, and Julien, forgetting to pretend, reaches an extreme happiness.
- Book I, chapter 12: A journey: In the mountain grotto, alone and free, Julien feels happier than he has ever been in his whole life.
- Book I, chapter 15: The crowing of the rooster: After the first night with Madame de Rênal, Julien sees that victory does not bring what he expected and asks himself whether being happy and being loved is only that.
- Book I, chapter 30: An ambitious man: The narrator says that the return of Madame de Rênal's tenderness would have been a divine happiness had it not been obtained by artifice.
- Book II, chapter 8: Which decoration is the most honorable: At the ball, Mathilde acknowledges that fortune gave her learning, wealth and youth, everything except happiness.
- Book II, chapter 11: The empire of a young woman: Mathilde declares to herself, in a burst of joy, that she has the happiness of loving.
- Book II, chapter 39: The intrigue: Julien, weary of Mathilde's heroism, would have been sensitive to a simple tenderness, and the memory of Vergy and Verrières takes the place of dead ambition.
- Book II, chapter 40: Tranquility: Julien lives in the tower with a tranquility that makes him surprised he has known the art of enjoying life only at its end.
- Book II, chapter 43: At the reunion with Madame de Rênal, Julien proposes that they spend two months together and says that he has never been so happy.
- Book II, chapter 45: On his visits to prison, Julien tells Madame de Rênal that an impetuous ambition carried his soul to imaginary regions when he could have been happy in the woods of Vergy, and that he would die without knowing happiness if she had not come to see him.
Passages
The grotto, where happiness comes from freedom and not from a conquest:
With his head resting in his hands, Julien felt happier in the grotto than he had ever been in all his life, stirred by reverie and by the enjoyment of freedom.
The conquest achieved, which disappoints:
My God! Being happy, being loved, is that all it is?
The narrator separates happiness from the pleasure obtained by calculation:
Had the return to tender feelings and the eclipse of Madame de Rênal's remorse come a little sooner, they would have been a divine happiness; obtained in this way, by artifice, they were nothing more than a pleasure.
At the reunion in prison, the sentence that closes the arc:
Could we not spend two months together in a delightful way? Two months are many days. I shall never have been so happy.
And the final reckoning, made before Madame de Rênal:
when I could have been so happy in our walks in the woods of Vergy, an impetuous ambition carried my soul off to imaginary regions. [...] No, I would have died without knowing happiness if you had not come to see me in this prison.