Critics of Stendhal tend to agree that in his two chief novels he is protesting against a society which prevents his “justified” characters from being better than they are. It is true that he was a protestant in politics. He was no republican, although a liberal, and, as he insisted, a sincere one, he alone having, he claimed, “political virtue”: Napoleon’s generals sold themselves, the liberals sold themselves and Louis-Philippe was le plus fripon des Kings. But republics were a bore and “anti-imagination.” Aristocratic in tastes, he was critical of the aristocracy as a class—in the Chartreuse he questions the assumption of the leisured class that it has a right to leisure. He was sentimentally drawn to the people and could not bear their sweaty night-caps. Even the famous cult of energy seems to be a protest against the tameness of contemporary manners.
But it is arguable that in his novels he is not merely crying woe on an age which frustrated energy. He judges his time but does not forget to include himself in his judgment. He is trying to find a public or rather, he is investigating the question, how far is it possible to have a public and remain authentically oneself? Where critics err is in supposing that Stendhal is unequivocally for his characters against a common enemy, society. They see his irony without seeing that he includes his characters and so himself in his irony. Our intention here is to show that Stendhal is more concerned with the integrity of the double consciousness (this expression will be clarified) than in lamenting that his time is out of joint.
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