I'm reading Le Rouge et le Noir ("The Red and the Black"), an 1830 French novel by Stendhal...
One passage in particular struck me. Stendhal is describing two characters who are falling in love (mostly); both are young, have lived all their lives in a backwater provincial town, and neither has been well educated.
The idea that reading novels could change the way people fall in love might strange today, but remember that in 1830 the novel as we know it was still a fairly new invention, and was seen in conservative quarters as potentially dangerous. Stendhal was of course pro-novels (he was a novelist), but he accepts that they have a profound effect on the minds of readers.
In Paris, the nature of [her] attitude towards [him] would have very quickly become plain - but in Paris, love is an offspring of the novels. In three or four such ...
