SOURCE: "Stendhal's First Novel," in Art of French Fiction, New Directions, 1959, pp. 63-90.

In the following excerpt, Turnell examines Armance to see what light it sheds on Stendhal's later work, his times, and nineteenth century psychology.

Stendhal's first novel was not the work of a beginner. Armance was published in 1827 when he was forty-four years old and already had seven other books to his credit. It was unpopular in his lifetime, and has been criticized by Stendhalians of unimpeachable orthodoxy. It is not a masterpiece, but it is a book that only Stendhal could have written and deserves to be read for four reasons: its intrinsic merits as a novel, as a psychological study of a 'case', as a picture of French society during the Restoration, and for the light that it throws on the author's later development.

It is instructive to glance back at Stendhal's early years...