Sand, George

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SAND, GEORGE

SAND, GEORGE (1804–1876), French novelist.

The greatest woman writer of nineteenth-century France, George Sand was born Amantine Aurore Lucile Dupin of "mixed" parentage. Her father was the illegitimate grandson of Maurice de Saxe (himself the illegitimate son of Augustus II, king of Poland) and her mother of proletarian background. Sand makes much of this double heritage in her autobiography, Histoire de ma vie (1854–1855; Story of My Life), and ascribes her penchant for celebrating rustic and proletarian life, in novels such as Le compagnon du tour de France (1840; The Journeyman Joiner or The Companion of the Tour of France), Horace (1842), Jeanne (1844), La Mare au diable (1846; The Haunted Pool), François le champi (1848), and La petite Fadette (1849; Little Fadette), to her maternal roots.

She burst onto the Parisian literary scene in 1832 with a novel entitled Indiana, an instant best-seller, which she signed G. Sand. It was only a year later, with the publication of Lélia, a work of dark lyric power, that she used the full-fledged pseudonym by which she became (and continues to be) known. At the time, Lélia caused a scandal for its daring depiction of female sexuality. In the early twenty-first century, it is considered one of Sand's masterpieces, along with Consuelo (1842–1843) and La comtesse de Rudolstadt (1843–1844; The Countess of Rudolstadt). The latter two works together constitute a great feminine bildungsroman, a historical saga, and a vast novel with a utopian message.

While Lélia and the Consuelo cycle stand as Sand's two great fictional achievements, representing her Romantic period and her politically engaged decade, they must not overshadow the fact that Sand wrote more than ninety novels during a period spanning more than four decades. She wrote regularly every day throughout her life. At her death, she left an unfinished novel, Albine Fiori, published posthumously and reissued in 1997. She also produced a large body of autobiographical writings; a substantial number of plays; a large number of critical articles on literary, artistic, cultural, and political subjects; and a vast correspondence (twenty-six volumes) with virtually every writer, politician, and cultural personality of her day. Georges Lubin, who devoted half a century to the compilation of her letters, estimates that she had more than two thousand addressees. The letters that Sand exchanged with Gustave Flaubert from 1862 until her death constitute one of the great literary correspondences of the century.

But ultimately it is her novels that matter. After falling out of favor for more than a century, Sand's fictional oeuvre is being widely rediscovered and read. In addition to the titles already cited, many other works are worthy of mention: Spiridion (1839), Gabriel (1840), Isidora (1846), Le Péché de Monsieur Antoine (1847; The Sin of Monsieur Antoine), Le marquis de Villemer (1861), Antonia (1863), La Confession d'une jeune fille (1865; Confession of a young girl), Nanon (1872). Unfortunately, English speakers may find it difficult to find good translations—indeed, to find translations at all in many cases. There is, for example, no full-scale translation of Lélia into English as of 2006. Her style is difficult to translate as she frequently employs some of the longest sentences in the French language after Marcel Proust. Unlike him, however, Sand has yet to be graced with the translators she deserves.

In her century, Sand was routinely discussed as Honoré de Balzac's equal, her idealism contrasted to his realism, an opposition that she herself addresses in Histoire de ma vie and Le compagnon du tour de France. Yet Sand's reputation steadily declined after her death, especially compared to the other great French nineteenth-century novelists. In the age of naturalism, her novels were criticized by Émile Zola and his followers who detested Romanticism and favored the realists. In the early twentieth century, her works were largely disdained, if not reviled, by the likes of Charles Maurras and Léon Daudet who found in her the epitome of what they called "the stupid nineteenth century," Even while abroad, though writers such as Fyodor Dostoevsky, Henry

James, and George Eliot paid her homage, Sand was increasingly marginalized in France. Only her rustic novels were deemed worthy of attention, and these were relegated to the margins of the canon, classified as regional or children's literature.

Her fascinating life, her eccentric lifestyle (male dress and cigars), her famous lovers and friends (Delacroix, Balzac, Flaubert, Franz Liszt, and Frédéric Chopin, among others) exerted more fascination on the public than her works. As a result, many more biographies exist than critical works. The French have obsessed over her affair with the poet Alfred de Musset, with particular emphasis on their escapade to Venice that was a fiasco. This tragic affair has prompted dozens of accounts over the years, following their own original versions, his in La Confession d'un enfant du siècle (1836; Confession of a Child of the Century), and hers in Elle et lui (1859; She and He).Americans prefer to dwell on her nine-year liaison with Chopin. Critics have tended to judge Sand harshly, citing the fact that after they parted, she refused to see him again, even as he lay dying. That the composer produced a large portion of his best work in her care is less often acknowledged.

In the post–World War II era, the efforts of scholars such as Georges Lubin, Léon Cellier, and biographers such as André Maurois revived interest in Sand's work. The centennial of her death in 1976 provided an occasion for both academics and feminists to turn their attention to her, especially in the United States. Despite her renewed fortune, it is striking how easily she still provokes negative reactions in the early twenty-first century. Some feminists fault her for not being feminist enough, particularly for disassociating herself from women's political groups in 1848. Some biographers condemn her as a bad mother, a bad lover, a bad friend. Some critics, echoing Charles Baudelaire's scornful and sexist remarks, still dismiss her as a second-rate writer. Two hundred years after her birth Sand's reputation remains unsettled. The traditional view has not been wholly dislodged. But this is not surprising since taking Sand's writing into full consideration entails seeing nineteenth-century French literature in a radically new light. That is only a question of time.

See alsoChopin, Frédéric; Feminism; France; Gender; Liszt, Franz.

bibliography

Primary Sources

Sand, George. Correspondance. 25 vols. Edited by Georges Lubin. Paris, 1964–1991; Vol. 26 (Suppléments), Tusson, 1995.

——. Oeuvres complètes. 35 vols. Geneva, 1979–1980. Reprint of C. Lévy, 1863–1926.

——. Story of My Life: The Autobiography of George Sand. Edited by Thelma Jurgrau. Albany, N.Y., 1991. Translation of Histoire de ma vie (1854–1855).

Steegmuller, Francis, ed. and trans. Flaubert-Sand: The Correspondence. New York, 1993. Translation based on the edition by Alphonse Jacobs (1981).