George Sand

George Sand
Portrait of George Sand by Auguste Charpentier (1838)
Born	Amantine Lucile Dupin (1804-07-01)1 July 1804 Paris, France
Died	8 June 1876(1876-06-08) (aged 71) Nohant-Vic, France
Spouse(s)	Casimir Dudevant (m. 1822; separated 1835)
Children	Maurice Sand Solange Sand
Parents	Maurice Dupin (father) Sophie-Victorie Delaborde (mother)

Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin^[1] (French: [amɑ̃tin lysil oʁɔʁ dypɛ̃]; 1 July 1804 – 8 June 1876), best known by her nom de plume George Sand (French: [ʒɔʁʒ sɑ̃d]), was a French novelist, memoirist, and socialist.^[2][3]

Life[edit]

Sand wrote: "My name is not Marie-Aurore de Saxe, Marquise of Dudevant, as several of my biographers have asserted, but Amantine-Lucile-Aurore Dupin, and my husband, M. François Dudevant, claims no title: the highest rank he ever reached was that of infantry second lieutenant."^[4]

Always known simply as "Aurore",^[5] she was born in Paris, but raised for much of her childhood by her grandmother, Marie-Aurore de Saxe, Madame Dupin de Francueil, at her grandmother's estate, Nohant, in the French province of Berry (see House of George Sand). Sand later used the setting in many of her novels. Her upbringing was quite liberal. Her father, Maurice Dupin, was the grandson of the Marshal General of France, Maurice, Comte de Saxe, an illegitimate son of Augustus II the Strong, King of Poland and a Saxon elector, and a cousin to the sixth degree to Kings Louis XVI, Louis XVIII and Charles X of France.^[6] She was also related much more distantly to King Louis Philippe of France through common ancestors from German and Danish ruling families. Sand's mother, Sophie-Victoire Delaborde, however, was a commoner.

In 1822, at the age of eighteen, Sand married Casimir Dudevant^[7] (1795–1871; first name "François"), illegitimate son of Baron Jean-François Dudevant. She and Dudevant had two children: Maurice (1823–1889) and Solange (1828–1899). In 1825 she had an intense but perhaps platonic affair with the young lawyer Aurélien de Sèze.^[8] In early 1831, she left her husband and entered upon a four- or five-year period of "romantic rebellion." In 1835, she was legally separated from Dudevant and took her children with her.

Sand conducted affairs of varying duration with Jules Sandeau (1831), Prosper Mérimée, Alfred de Musset (summer 1833 – March 1835), Louis-Chrysostome Michel, Pierre-François Bocage, Charles Didier, Félicien Mallefille, Louis Blanc, and Frédéric Chopin (1837–1847).^[9] Later in life, she corresponded with Gustave Flaubert, and despite their differences in temperament and aesthetic preference, they eventually became close friends. She engaged in an intimate friendship with actress Marie Dorval, which led to widespread but unconfirmed rumours of a lesbian affair.^[10]

In Majorca one can still visit the (formerly abandoned) Carthusian monastery of Valldemossa, where she spent the winter of 1838–1839 with Chopin and her children.^[11] This trip to Majorca was described by her in Un hiver à Majorque (A Winter in Majorca), first published in 1841.^[12] Chopin was already ill with incipient tuberculosis (or, as has recently been suggested, cystic fibrosis) at the beginning of their relationship, and spending a winter in Majorca—where Sand and Chopin did not realize that winter was a time of rain and cold and where they could not get proper lodgings—exacerbated his symptoms.^[13] They separated two years before his death for a variety of reasons. In her novel Lucrezia Floriani, Sand used Chopin as a model for a sickly Eastern European prince named Karol. He is cared for by a middle-aged actress past her prime, Lucrezia, who suffers a great deal through her affection for Karol.^[14] Though Sand claimed not to have made a cartoon out of Chopin, the book's publication and widespread readership may have exacerbated their antipathy to each other. The tipping point in their relationship involved her daughter Solange.

Sand as Mary Magdalene in a sketch by Louis Boulanger

Chopin continued to be cordial to Solange after she and her husband, Auguste Clésinger, had a vicious falling out with Sand over money. Sand took Chopin's support of Solange as outright treachery and confirmation that Chopin had always "loved" Solange.^[15] Sand's son Maurice also disliked Chopin. Maurice wanted to establish himself as the "man of the estate" and did not wish to have Chopin as a rival. Chopin was never asked back to Nohant; in 1848, he returned to Paris from a tour of the United Kingdom, to die at the Place Vendôme in the following year. Chopin was penniless at that time; his friends had to pay for his stay there, as well as his funeral at the Madeleine. The funeral was attended by over 3,000 people, including Eugène Delacroix, Franz Liszt, Victor Hugo and other famous people. George Sand was notable by her absence.

Sand was also known for her implication and writings during the Paris Commune, where she took a position for the Versailles assembly against the "communards," urging them to take violent action against the "rebels."^[16]

Writing[edit]

Casimir Dudevant, Sand's husband, in the 1860s

George Sand by Charles Louis Gratia (c. 1835)

A liaison with the writer Jules Sandeau heralded her literary debut. They published a few stories in collaboration, signing them "Jules Sand." Her first published novel, Rose et Blanche (1831), was written in collaboration with Sandeau. She subsequently adopted, for her first independent novel, Indiana (1832), the pen name that made her famous – George Sand.^[17]

Drawing from her childhood experiences of the countryside, she wrote the pastoral novels La Mare au Diable (1846), François le Champi (1847–1848), La Petite Fadette (1849), and Les Beaux Messieurs de Bois-Doré (1857).^[18] A Winter in Majorca described the period that she and Chopin spent on that island from 1838 to 1839. Her other novels include Indiana (1832), Lélia (1833), Mauprat (1837), Le Compagnon du Tour de France (1840), Consuelo (1842–1843), and Le Meunier d'Angibault (1845). Theatre pieces and autobiographical pieces include Histoire de ma vie (1855), Elle et Lui (1859, about her affair with Musset), Journal Intime (posthumously published in 1926), and Correspondence. Sand often performed her theatrical works in her small private theatre at the Nohant estate.

In addition, Sand authored literary criticism and political texts. Because of her early life, she sided with the poor and working class as well as women's rights. When the 1848 Revolution began, she was an ardent republican. Sand started her own newspaper, which was published in a workers' co-operative.^[19]

However, she was appalled by the violence of the Paris Commune. She wrote: "The horrible adventure continues. They ransom, they threaten, they arrest, they judge. They have taken over all the city halls, all the public establishments, they’re pillaging the munitions and the food supplies."^[20]

Sand sewing, from Portrait of Frédéric Chopin and George Sand (1838), Delacroix

Sand was well known around the world, while her social practices, writings, and beliefs prompted much commentary, often by other members of the world of arts and letters, e.g.:

She was a thinking bosom and one who overpowered her young lovers. – V. S. Pritchett ^[21]

She loved both of us, but you above all. What a heart of gold she had! What absence of every petty, mean, or false feeling! What a brave man she was, and what a good woman! – Ivan Turgenev ^[22]

Tell her that I love her with all my heart, that she is still the most womanly woman I have ever known. – Alfred de Musset ^[23]

The most widely used quote of her own is: "There is only one happiness in life, to love and be loved." ^{[This quote needs a citation]}

Death[edit]

George Sand died at Nohant, near Châteauroux, in France's Indre département on 8 June 1876, at the age of 71. She was buried in the private graveyard behind the chapel at Nohant-Vic.^[24] In 2003, plans that her remains be moved to the Panthéon in Paris resulted in controversy.^[25][26]

Contemporary views[edit]

Opinions on Her Writings[edit]

George Sand was the most popular writer (of any gender) in Europe by the age of 27,^[28] being more popular than both Victor Hugo and Honore de Balzac in England in the 1830s and 1840s,^[29] and remained immensely popular as a writer throughout her lifetime and long after her death. Early in her career, her work was in high demand and already by 1836, the first of several compendia of her writings was published in 24 volumes.^[30][31] In total, 4 separate editions of her "Complete Works" were published during her lifetime in 1880 her children sold the rights to her literary estate for 125,000 Francs^[30] (equivalent to 36kg worth of gold, or 1.3 Million Dollars in 2015 USD^[32])

Not only was her writing immensely popular during her lifetime, but she was highly respected by the literary and cultural elite in France. Victor Hugo, in the eulogy he gave at her funeral, said "the lyre was within her."^[33]

In this country whose law is to complete the French Revolution and begin that of the equality of the sexes, being a part of the equality of men, a great woman was needed. It was necessary to prove that a woman could have all the manly gifts without losing any of her angelic qualities, be strong without ceasing to be tender… George Sand proved it.

— Victor Hugo, Les funérailles de George Sand

Eugene Delacroix was a close friend and respected her literary gifts.^[34] Flaubert, by no means an indulgent or forbearing critic, was an unabashed admirer. Honoré de Balzac, who knew Sand personally, once said that if someone thought she wrote badly, it was because their own standards of criticism were inadequate. He also noted that her treatment of imagery in her works showed that her writing had an exceptional subtlety, having the ability to "virtually put the image in the word."^[35][36] Alfred de Vigny referred to her as "Sappho"^[33]

Not all of her contemporaries admired her or her writing: poet Charles Baudelaire was one contemporary critic of George Sand:^[37] "She is stupid, heavy and garrulous. Her ideas on morals have the same depth of judgment and delicacy of feeling as those of janitresses and kept women ... The fact that there are men who could become enamoured of this slut is indeed a proof of the abasement of the men of this generation."^[38]

Her Politics[edit]

Politically, she became very active after 1841 and the leaders of the day often consulted with her and took her advice. She was a member of the provisional government of 1848, and during Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte’s coup d’état of December 1851, she negotiated pardons and reduced sentences for her friends.^[28]

Her comportment[edit]

Sand was one of many leading 19th-century women who chose to wear male attire in public. In 1800, the police issued an order requiring women to apply for a permit in order to wear male clothing. Some women applied for health, occupational, or recreational reasons (i.e. horseback riding), but many women chose to wear pants and other traditional male attire in public without receiving a permit, they did so as well for practical reasons, but also at times to subvert dominant stereotypes.^[39] Sand was one of the women who did not apply for a permit and did sport men's clothing, which she justified by the clothes being, firstly less expensive, and also far sturdier than the typical dress of a noblewoman at the time. In addition to being comfortable, Sand's male dress enabled her to circulate more freely in Paris than most of her female contemporaries, and gave her increased access to venues from which women were often barred, even women of her social standing. Also scandalous was Sand's smoking tobacco in public; neither peerage nor gentry had yet sanctioned the free indulgence of women in such a habit, especially in public (though Franz Liszt's paramour Marie d'Agoult affected this as well, smoking large cigars). While there were many contemporary critics of her comportment, many people accepted her behavior until they became shocked with the subversive tone of her novels.^[29] Those who found her writing admirable were not bothered by her ambiguous or rebellious public behavior. As Victor Hugo commented, “George Sand cannot determine whether she is male or female. I entertain a high regard for all my colleagues, but it is not my place to decide whether she is my sister or my brother.”^[40]

These and other behaviors were exceptional for a woman of the early and mid-19th century, when social codes—especially in the upper classes—were of the utmost importance. As a consequence of many unorthodox aspects of her lifestyle, Sand was obliged to relinquish some of the privileges appertaining to a baroness,^{[citation needed]} though the mores of the period did permit upper-class wives to live physically separate from their husbands, without losing face, provided the estranged couple exhibited no blatant irregularity to the outside world.

Influences on literature[edit]

Fyodor Dostoevsky "read widely in the numerous novels of George Sand" and translated her La dernière Aldini in 1844, but "discovered to his dismay that the work had already appeared in Russian".^[41] In his novel Demons (1871), the character of Stepan Verkhovensky takes to translating the works of George Sand in his periodical, before the periodical was subsequently seized by the ever-cautious Russian government of the 1840s. The English poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–61) wrote two poems: "To George Sand: A Desire" (1853) and "To George Sand: A Recognition". The American poet Walt Whitman cited Sand's novel Consuelo as a personal favorite, and the sequel to this novel, La Comtesse de Rudolstadt, contains at least a couple of passages that appear to have had a very direct influence on him. In the first episode of the "Overture" to Swann's Way—the first novel in Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time sequence—a young, distraught Marcel is calmed by his mother as she reads from François le Champi, a novel which (it is explained) was part of a gift from his grandmother, which also included La Mare au Diable, La Petite Fadette, and Les Maîtres Sonneurs. As with many episodes involving art in À la recherche du temps perdu, this reminiscence includes commentary on the work. Sand is also referred to in Virginia Woolf's book-length essay A Room of One's Own along with George Eliot and Charlotte Brontë as "all victims of inner strife as their writings prove, sought ineffectively to veil themselves by using the name of a man."^[42]

Frequent literary references to George Sand can be found in Possession (1990) by A. S. Byatt and in the play Voyage, the first part of Tom Stoppard's The Coast of Utopia trilogy (2002). George Sand also makes an appearance in Isabel Allende's Zorro, going still by her given name, as a young girl in love with Diego de la Vega, i.e., Zorro.

In film[edit]

Actress Judy Davis portrays George Sand in James Lapine's 1991 British-American film Impromptu; while Juliette Binoche portrays Sand in the 1999 French film Children of the Century (Les Enfants du Siècle).

Works[edit]

See also[edit]

• Elizabeth Ann Ashurst (translator)
• Pauline Viardot
• House of George Sand
• Musée de la Vie Romantique
• Saint-Benoît-du-Sault

References[edit]

Notes

Sources

• George Sand – Bicentennial Exhibition, Musée de la Vie romantique, Paris, 2004, curated by Jérôme Godeau. Contributions by Diane de Margerie, Yves Gagneux, Françoise Heilbrun, Isabelle Leroy-Jay Lemaistre, Claude Samuel, Arlette Sérullaz, Vincent Pomarède, Nicole Savy & Martine Reid.
• Bédé, Jean-Albert (1986), "Sand, George", Encyclopedia Americana, 24, pp. 218–19.
• Sand, George, Correspondence (letters) (see "Writings by George Sand").
• Szulc, Tad (1998), Chopin in Paris: the Life and Times of the Romantic Composer, New York: Scribner, ISBN 978-0-684-82458-1.
• Doumic, René – George Sand, some aspects of her life and writings at Project Gutenberg
• In French:
• Caro, Elme – George Sand at Project Gutenberg
• Roy, Albert le – George Sand et ses amis at Project Gutenberg
  • Dictionnaire Encyclopédique de la Langue Française (3ième ed.)
• Paintault, Micheline (Director); Cerf, Claudine (Author) (2004), George Sand: The Story of Her Life (DVD), France 5.
• Yates, Jim (2007), Oh! Père Lachaise: Oscar's Wilde Purgatory, Édition d'Amèlie, ISBN 978-0-9555836-1-2 Oscar Wilde dreams of George Sand and is invited to a soirée at Nohant.

External links[edit]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to George Sand.

Wikiquote has quotations related to: George Sand

• George Sand—a site in memory of the 200th anniversary of the George Sand's birth (in French)
• George Sand, her work in French free readable version (in French)
• George Sand, her work in audio version (in French)
• Works by George Sand at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about George Sand at Internet Archive
• Works by George Sand at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
•  Storr, Francis (1911). "Sand, George". Encyclopædia Britannica. 24 (11th ed.). pp. 131–135.