Salons in Stendahl and Proust

Stendahl (The Red and the Black, 1830) and Proust (almost a century later) build much of their great novels on encounters and conversations that the hero/protagonist (Julien Sorel/"Marcel") participates in and closely observes in Paris salons. Both writers present characters who aspire to be part of the intellectual/political discussions at these salons, while also sitting back as a contemptuous observer and chronicler. Stendehl's Julien is more of a climber and arriviste, a carpenter's son from the country newly arrived in Paris and clearly a social inferior to those w/ whom he converses - at least until he proves his worthiness (in their view) through his intelligence, acuity, and foolish bravado (getting wounded in a pistol duel to avenge a trivial insult). Proust's Marcel is nearly part of the smartest social set - from a wealthy family and Paris native - but he just barely makes the cut at the Guermantes salon. Proust's salonistes are witty, in a particularly testy and circumspect manner, and artistic; although there is much salon talk of the contemporary Dreyfus case and its implications, particularly for French Jews (such as Proust), the salons are primarily literary and artistic gatherings, with writers, critics, artists, and musicians as the most highly esteemed guests. Stendahl's people are trivial and gossips, by comparison - and they are not fully developed characters with their own secrets and idiosyncrasies, as is for ex the Baron de Charlus, with his loosely kept secret of homosexuality and SM practices. It takes 7 volumes but in the end Marcel recognizes the sordid snobbery of the salons to which he'd once aspired. In Stendahl, Julien recognizes from the start the insipid nature of the salon at the Hotel de la Mole, but he sees his attendance, participation, and acceptance as necessary rungs on the social ladder that he believes he must (is destined to) ascend.