“ But under our more gloomy skies, a poor young man who is only ambitious because his natural refinement makes him feel the necessity of some of those joys which only money can give, can see every day a woman of thirty who is sincerely virtuous, is absorbed in her children, and never goes to novels for her examples of conduct. ”
Stendhal, The Red and the Black (1830). copy citation
| Author | Stendhal |
|---|---|
| Source | The Red and the Black |
| Topic | refinement money |
| Date | 1830 |
| Language | English |
| Reference | |
| Note | Translated by Horace B. Samuel |
| Weblink | https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Red_and_the_Black |
Context
“The novels which have traced out for them the part they would play, and showed them the model which they were to imitate, and Julien would sooner or later have been forced by his vanity to follow that model, even though it had given him no pleasure and had perhaps actually gone against the grain.
If the scene had been laid in a small town in Aveyron or the Pyrenees, the slightest episode would have been rendered crucial by the fiery condition of the atmosphere. But under our more gloomy skies, a poor young man who is only ambitious because his natural refinement makes him feel the necessity of some of those joys which only money can give, can see every day a woman of thirty who is sincerely virtuous, is absorbed in her children, and never goes to novels for her examples of conduct. Everything goes slowly, everything happens gradually, in the provinces where there is far more naturalness.
Madame de Rênal was often overcome to the point of tears when she thought of the young tutor's poverty.”
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