Abstract
In this article, I examine some intertwined themes that link Stendhal’s first novel, Armance (1827), to two of his subsequent works of fiction: the incomplete novel Le Rose et le vert, written in 1837, and its precursor, a fragmentary novelette entitled Mina de Vanghel, written in 1829–30. The article demonstrates that the heroes of Armance and Le Rose et le vert—Vicomte Octave de Malivert and Duc Léon de Montenotte, respectively—resemble one another in numerous ways, most notably in their aversion for and Byronic rebellion against the aristocratic elite to which they belong. The article further demonstrates that Lord Byron’s notorious failure in marriage and his consequent reputation in the beau monde for monstrousness are evoked indirectly in Armance and directly in Le Rose et le vert to help explain the fears of and failures in marriage of the heroes of the two novels. My analysis of Octave’s and Léon’s social predicament as alienated aristocrats, of their rebellion against their own class, of their antipathy to high society’s marriage market, of their troubled relations with the women they love, and of the dreams of derogation and escape that they share with those women reveals their deep kinship not only with one another and with Lord Byron (or, rather, with Lord Byron as Stendhal whimsically perceived him), but also with the male and female protagonists of Mina de Vanghel.
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Notes
The immense French vogue for Byronism of the 1820s, the decade in which Armance was written and published, and the great influence that Byron and his works exerted during that period on French writers—including Hugo, Lamartine, Vigny, and Musset—are studied in Estève (1929: 86–198, 299–435, 496–499) (the latter pages being devoted to Armance). Discussions of Octave de Malivert’s Byronism appear in Crouzet (1974: 64–68), Rosa (1982, 1994, 1987, 2012) and Thompson (1983: 520–522, 526–539, 1987: 113–123, 2004: 309–310, 313–315). On the Byronism that pervades the final chapter of Armance, see Rosa (1987) in particular.
For abundant textual evidence validating the comparisons made in this paragraph, see Chapters 1–6, 14–15, and 18 of Armance and Chapters 6–9 of Le Rose et le vert. The adjective “glacial” and the expression “noblesse oblige” (emphasis original) appear, respectively, on pp. 78 and 171 of the former novel (Stendhal 1994) and on pp. 169 and 173 of the latter (Stendhal 1998).
In that letter, Octave confesses his secret, and he has every reason to expect Armance’s continued love after she reads it. Indeed, before Octave wrote the letter, his cousin had assured him with “angélique bonté” and great conviction that she already had forgiven him for any secret he might have (247).
Stendhal (1973: 125), emphasis original. After the breakup of Byron’s short-lived marriage, for which his frequently callous and at times cruel conduct was mainly to blame (see MacCarthy 2002: 236–262), he left England, never to return, in late April 1816, by which time widespread rumors concerning the reasons for that breakup were in circulation. Many of those rumors contained distortions and fabrications suggesting that the poet was a pitiless monster. Stendhal, who met Byron at Milan in October 1816, defended him in his writings at that time and while he was finalizing Rome, Naples et Florence en 1817, which contains several references to such rumors, including the first sentence of the quoted excerpt under discussion. See Thompson (1987: 114–120) for a detailed analysis of Stendhal’s allusions in Rome, Naples et Florence en 1817 as well as in Histoire de la peinture en Italie (1817) to the rumors about Byron that began to circulate in 1816 and for cogent explanations of Stendhal’s comparisons, in the former work, of Byron to Tom Jones (118–120) and to Mirabeau (119, 120–121).
Byron humorously alludes to his reputation as a monstrous husband in Don Juan (1819–1824), a poem that Stendhal greatly admired and from which he drew two chapter epigraphs in Armance (see chs. 5 and 7) and seven chapter epigraphs in Le Rouge et le noir (1830; see Bk. I, chs. 8, 10, 11, 16; Bk. II, chs. 17, 26, 30). In Don Juan’s twelfth canto, which was published in 1823, Byron makes the following observation concerning his wife: “I’ll not gainsay the generous public’s voice,/That the young lady made a monstrous choice” (Byron 1903: 466).
The first quotation in this sentence appears in a planned continuation of Le Rose et le vert (223); the second in Chapter 7 of the novel (177). See also Chapter 6 (175): “Léon eût été plus heureux en arrivant dans un salon de s’entendre annoncer par le simple nom de Malin-La-Rivoire que son père avait illustré suffisamment que par celui de duc de Montenotte.”
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Rosa, G.M. Aristocratic Alienation and Byronic Rebellion in Stendhal’s Armance, Le Rose et le vert, and Mina de Vanghel. Neophilologus 103, 189–197 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11061-018-09593-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11061-018-09593-3