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The Novel and the Guillotine; or, Fathers and Sons in Le Rouge et le noir

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Peter Brooks
Peter Brooks*
Affiliation:
Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut
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Abstract

The end of Le Rouge et le noir constitutes a chronic critical scandal, raising a host of problems concerning the novel's plot and its legitimating authority that may be approached through the question of paternity in the career of Julien Sorel. Paternity becomes a key issue in a novel structured by a conflict between legitimacy and usurpation, a conflict that has political, historical, and narratological implications. Politics versus manners, the hypothesis of Julien's illegitimate noble birth versus his career of monstrous usurpation, the role of the narrator as a father figure who subverts paternalistic control–these and related questions may provide a context for reading the end of the novel, for determining the relation of what Julien calls his novel to Stendhal's, and for understanding the uses of the guillotine.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 97 , Issue 3 , May 1982 , pp. 348 - 362
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1982

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