Politics in Nineteenth Century Literature - by K. D. Braithwaite
With the Nineteenth Century Politics enter Literature
The post-Enlightenment culture rested upon the reassurances that human understanding offered a way to bettering the world, and could be shaped by environment, education, and experience. (Cantor: 1988, 2-3). Between 1790 and 1850, during the time when Stendhal and Balzac were writing, Romanticism had developed in response to the threat to personal identity posited by an increasingly industrial and commercialised age. The authors’ predecessors paid great attention to the importance of history in literature and worked towards achieving a sense of harmony between individual and place that had been recognised by the preceding Reformation and Enlightenment movements (Cantor: 1988, 3). This essay considers Stendhal’s The Red and the Black, examining the dualistic elements of his vision and the subtle yet consistent representation of his political ideas. Close reading of passages are compared to readings taken from Balzac’s Old Goriot.
Although Stendhal is often considered as having written for a twentieth century audience, the formative years of his vision witnessed the developing political identities of Europe during the late seventeenth century. We see in The Red and the Black an author trying to balance the demands of an evolving political liberalism with a religious culture that based value on the status of the individual in society. Stendhal certainly recognised the work of Jean Jacques Rousseau, who alongside others, postulated that Newton’s discoveries had allowed an insight into the philosophical and scientific potential of mankind to solve social problems, and thus contribute to shaping a better society. (Ibid). Rousseau believed that hierarchical political institutions were unethical and unnatural artificial creations and should be rebelled against, saying "It is plainly contrary to the laws of nature, however defined, that children should command old men, fools wise men, and the privileged few should gorge themselves with the superfluities while the starving multitude are in want of the bare necessities of life." (In Cantor, p.3). Rousseau was admired for his radical politically-informed writing. One such admirer was Percy Shelley who revered ‘his famously impassioned style [..] transcending the bounds of eighteenth-century sentimental narrative, breaking down the conventional barriers existing between writer and reader, to function as an overpoweringly direct and unmediated conduit of libertarian sentiment.’ (Dart: 1999, 3).
It was perhaps Rousseau’s kind of experimentalism that Stendhal aspired to achieve in his own work; albeit being consistently held back by the dualistic and irreconcilable extremes in his work between the instinctive and personal aspirations of human love and the impersonal ruthlessness of the socio-political world. We see this problem expressed by Stendhal at the beginning of the book when the priest of Verrieres, Father Chelan, who has a is accompanied by M. Appert in his inspection of the gaol. The gaoler fears he will lose his job if it is discovered that he has permitted entry to the priest’s companion:
'I concede, M. Noiroud, that this traveller I have with me is M. Appert. Do you recognize my right to enter the prison at any hour of the day or night, and to take with me anyone I please?'
'Yes, Father Chélan,' said the gaoler in a low voice, hanging his head like a bulldog reluctantly cowed into submission by fear of the stick. 'But remember, Father Chélan, I've a wife and children, and if anyone tells on me, I'll get the sack. My job's all I've got to live off.'
'I should be just as put out to lose mine,' replied the good priest, sounding more and more agitated.
'But there's all the difference!' retorted the gaoler. 'You have an income of eight hundred pounds, Father Chélan, everyone knows you do--a nice bit of property...' (The Red and the Black, p.11).
Immediately Stendhal draws the reader’s attention to the inequalities present in early Nineteenth Century France, where more affluent persons who occupy positions of authority - such as the priest are juxtaposed against persons of lower stature, such as the gaoler. Stendhal emphasises this point through his ironic casting of his characters - depicting the authoritative priest as small and aged, yet with a ‘constitution and character of iron’ (11) while the submissive gaoler is ‘a bow-legged giant of a man six foot tall.’ It was during the early nineteenth century when concerns about the individual’s relationship with the political world became a feature of the novel - earlier representations of politics often took the forms of satirical caricatures, cartoons, and serialisations - many of which sought to highlight inconsistencies and shortcomings. What authors such as Balzac and Stendhal sought to achieve in the early 1800’s was a humorous exploration of the deeper moral implications of their society. They explored how political systems had brought about inequality for the individuals, such as old Goriot, who - albeit in part through his own generosity - ends up with no financial or emotional support at the end of his life. What distinguishes Balzac from his contemporaries is his ability to set his political commentary within a realist vision, using a complex set of characters (which reappeared in his other works). Balzac often used the smaller occurrence sin his novels - illustrating social politics between characters - as an analogy for the greater problems in the country’s political system. In the following passage we see old Goriot struggling to maintain his individuality in the presence of a money lender:
Just then Goriot appeared through the door that opened from the little staircase into the court, near the carriage entrance. The old fellow was carrying his umbrella and preparing to open it, not noticing that the great door had been opened to allow a tillbury driven by a young man wearing the ribbon of a decoration to enter. Old Goriot had barely time to throw himself backward to avoid being run over. The spread of silk had frightened the horse and it shied before dashing forward towards the steps. The young man turned his head angrily, looked at old Goriot, and before jumping out bowed to him with the constrained courtesy shown to money-lenders when their services are needed, or the conventional show of respect, to be blushed for later, exacted by a man with a tarnished reputation. Old Goriot replied with a good-natured wave of the hand, full of friendliness. (Old Goriot, P.68)
‘Just then’ suggests an effort on the author’s part to encourage this scene to be read as an ordinary event - perhaps even encouraging it to be initially overlooked. The event of Goriot’s inadvertent scaring of the horse is sudden - as illustrated by his ‘not noticing’ its approach and ‘barely’ having time to move out of the way. Yet it is not the physical event that Balzac wishes to draw attention to - rather it is the individual’s reactions which can be interpreted in a larger context. As in the passage from The Red and the Black discussed above, the contrasts are evident - between the genuine good nature of Goriot, who waves good-naturedly and ‘full of friendliness’ and the ‘constrained courtesy’ of the money-lender who only just manages to bow through his stifled anger. It was to become an integral feature of later High-realist fiction to imbue the small, everyday occurrences with greater symbolic meanings. It was as if the focus on the moments of communication between characters somehow made a grander statement about the human condition and the place of the individual than an entire speech set within a longer sequence. Balzac was eager to maintain a satirical edge to his fiction while still raising concern in the public eye for social problems which could be attributed to the inadequacies of political systems. As noted by Herbert Gold, one of the greatest strengths of Balzac’s work is the setting of the ‘solitary passion’ against the industrial revolution, the monolithic state, and the emergence of the corporation. (Gold, 1954). Balzac ‘may not have understood his society, which was ours in the raw, but his wrestling with it is one of the finest things in literature.’ (Gold: 1954, 10)
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