“So there[…]this is what rich people are like. First they humiliate you, then they think can make it all up to you be monkey business!”
Julian said this when he disappointed in Mayor de Renal. Madame gave him a present because he liked him and wanted to make life pleasurable for him. Mayor found it out and became very angry at him and at his wife. He humiliates Julien and then, for not let Julien go, rises his salary. Julien was very sad because of this situation and lost all his respect to Mayor and to rich people in general.
Things that to him seemed admirable were precisely those censured by the people around him. His silent response was always: “What monsters, what fools!” He was glad, and proud, that often he understood nothing they were talking about.
Julien didn’t understand the elite of society, their conversations seemed to him unnecessary and empty. He wanted to talk about something else than money, lands, politics. He didn’t have a desire to listen to news about how rich they were and what they’ve bought last week. His mind was larger and wider, so it was torture for him to join such a conversation.
“Like all women[…]There’s always something in need of repair, in those machines!”
Mayor de Renal never loses an opportunity to say something caustic about anybody, especially about women. He is not able to see beauty in his wife and in people in general, so he dare to compare woman with a machine.
“There’s already grandeur, and true audacity, in daring to love somebody so far beneath me in social standing”.
Matilda in her love to Julien feels herself very brave and noble, because Julien wasn’t from rich family and it was very unusual to fall in love with such a boy. And she feels herself a romantic heroine, who brakes the rules for the sake of love.
“What strange effect marriage has, in the form practiced by the nineteenth century! The boredom of married life certainly kills love, if love has preceded marriage”.
Stendhal in his novel accentuates that marriage is only agreement between two partners for future wealth of their families and love is far not obligatory for getting married.
