Plot
It concerns Octave de Malivert, a taciturn but brilliant young man barely out of the École Polytechnique, who is attracted to Armance Zohiloff, who shares his feelings. The novel describes how a series of misunderstandings kept the lovers Armance and Octave divided. Moreover, a series of clues suggest that Octave is impotent as a result of a severe accident. Octave is experiencing a deep inner turmoil; he himself illustrates the pain of the century's romantics. When the pair do eventually marry, the slanders of a rival convince Octave that Armance had married only out of selfishness. Octave leaves to fight in Greece, and dies there of sorrow.
Armance is based on the theme of Olivier, a novel by the Duchess Claire de Duras, whose scabrous nature forbade publication. But Stendhal has very quietly inserted the secret, without talking about it openly.
Read more about this topic: Armance (novel)
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—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
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“Morality for the novelist is expressed not so much in the choice of subject matter as in the plot of the narrative, which is perhaps why in our morally bewildered time novelists have often been timid about plot.”
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