Stendhal's Le Rouge et le Noir and Rousseau's Emile: Contrary Experiments

References to La Nouvelle Héloïse and the Confessions in Le Rouge et le Noir are associated with insincerity and a literary convention that run contrary to Julien's real self and the art of Stendhal. I contend that a comparative study between another of Rousseau's novels, Emile, and Stendhal's Le Rouge et le Noir shows them to be contrary experiments. The problem remains a theoretical one because influence can not be proved. Accepting the thesis of Rousseau as to the corruption of society, Stendhal takes the opposite approach in his experiment. While Emile is educated in a highly controlled environment, Stendhal plunges Julien into his historical moment. Each approaches the purity of an extreme intellectual position, an absolute ideal of messianic magnitude, and each experiences a fall from a promised greatness. Paradoxically, it is Emile rather than Julien who finally becomes a "monster." Stendhal's outcry against the absence of ideals in society contrasts with the more formal purpose of Rousseau who uses the failure of Emile in order to justify the complete reorganization of the state according to the Social Contract. (JFH)