Stendhal made women the substance, judges, and audience of his life and art

Evidence

Stendhal loved women sensually from childhood; he projected the hopes of his adolescence onto them: he readily imagined himself saving a beautiful stranger and winning her love. Once he was in Paris, what he wanted the most ardently was a “charming wife; we will adore each other, she will know my soul.” Grown old, he writes the initials of the women he loved the most in the dust. “I believe that dreaming was what I preferred above all,” he admits. And his dreams are nourished by images of women; his memories of them enliven the countryside. “The line of rocks when approaching Arbois and coming from Dole by the main road was, I believe, a touching and clear image for me of Métilde’s soul.” Music, painting, architecture, everything he cherished, he cherished it with an unlucky lover’s soul; while he is walking around Rome, a woman emerges at every turn of the page; by the regrets, desires, sadnesses, and joys women awakened in him, he came to know the nature of his own heart; it is women he wants as judges: he frequents their salons, he wants to shine; he owes them his greatest joys, his greatest pain, they were his main occupation; he prefers their love to any friendship, their friendship to that of men; women inspire his books, female figures populate them; he writes in great part for them. “I might be lucky enough to be read in 1900 by the souls I love, the Mme Rolands, the Mélanie Guilberts …” They were the very substance of his life. Where did this privilege come from? — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 607

Categorization

• QUESTION: Beauvoir ends by asking where Stendhal’s privilege for women came from — the turn that will structure her analysis of his difference.
• SHARE: For anyone who loves Stendhal or is thinking about male artists who took women seriously as equals — the Arbois rock image of Metilde’s soul is a lovely particular.