GEORGE SAND (aka AURORE DUDEVANT)

Sand's father was of aristocratic lineage; her mother was a commoner. Sand (Aurore Dupin by birth) was born in Paris but raised for much of her childhood by her grandmother at the family estate, Nohant, in the French region of Berry. In 1822 at age eighteen, she married Baron M. Casimir Dudevant and they had two children: Maurice and Solange.  They separated in 1835 (she had already been living in Paris independently since 1831).

Widespread critical attention accompanied the publication of most of Sand's novels beginning with INDIANA (1832), a story of a naive, love-starved woman abused by her much older husband and deceived by a selfish seducer.  VALENTINE (1832), LÉLIA (1833), JACQUES (1834) and ANDRÉ (1835) cemented her fame (or infamy).  CONSUELO (1843) made her respectable, but SPIRIDION (1839) and LES SEPT CORDES DE LA LYRE (1840) had already signaled a new direction arising from interest in the socialism of Pierre Leroux.

EXTRACTS FROM EARLY REVIEWS IN ENGLISH-LANGUAGE JOURNALS:

Athenaeum, Feb 1833:  “The writer of ‘Indiana’ and “Valentine’ is now positively known to be Madame Dudevant, a young lady who some years back, distinguished herself at the age of thirteen, by an indomitable wish to escape from her parents and seek out Lord Byron.  Frustrated in this, she was subsequently married, à la mode Française, to some son of the earth most unlike the poet.  Doubtful of the success of her productions, she published under the name of her friend Sand, who thus finds himself loaded with a celebrity which, not having talent enough to support, he has confessed the truth; and the lady thus alone stands answerable for works that do more honour to her genius than her delicacy.”

Athenaeum, Mar 1833:  “Her first work, ‘Indiana,’ was very popular, and as much talked of in the salons as an opera by Rossini.  It is a work that would not have been tolerated, despite its talent, in England. . . . The second volume [‘Valentine’] is as detestable, . . . consisting of seduction, suicide, intrusion into bridal chambers, and an utter contempt for all the obstacles of decorum, possibility, time, or place.”

Select Journal of Foreign Periodical Literature, Jan 1834: [about Lélia] “You may find in it an apology for every crime, a panegyric on every vice: debauchery is here a sublime expansion of human power; gaming, a magnificent heroism; a murderer is a bold contemner of the laws of social life; and a forçat, a galley-slave, is a strong-minded man, at war with society, but greater and nobler than his fellow-creatures.  If you condescend to be lectured by Lelia, she will tell you that the bold face of vice is a proof of strength, and the humbleness of virtue a proof of weakness.  She will bid you admire the giant-like crime, which towers above the prejudices, opinions, feelings, and morality of the every-day world, as the frozen summit of the Jungfrau towers above the plains.”

Athenaeum, Dec 1834: [about Jacques] “Mrs. Sand, or Mad. Dudevant, is undoubtedly the most gifted and original female writer of her country and times, a sort of female Jean Jacques Rousseau.  She has the same eloquence, the same pathos, the same voluptuousness of style, the same perverted philosophy, the same hatred to social restraints.  As he assailed the institutions of his country and the social system of his era, she, with no feebler hand, wages a perpetual war against the nuptial vow.”

Foreign Quarterly Review, Dec 1834: “ . . . even those novels which we rank highest in the scale, Indiana and Valentine, although not actually immoral, certainly not licentious, are often so daring in situation and in graphic delineation, are so generally deficient in refined delicacy, in glowing love of, and delight in, virtue, that we should hesitate about recommending even these to our fair and youthful readers. . . . Decidely, Madame Dudevant is so much more at home in her delineations of matrimonial miseries than in any other field, that she would well deserve to be called the Anti-matrimonial Novelist, if such a title implied any enviable distinction.”

MOST SIGNIFICANT EARLY CRITICAL ATTENTION:

London Quarterly Review in April 1836 published a 35-page essay by John Wilson Croker, reprinted immediately in New York, addressing novels by French writers Paul de Kock, Alexandre Dumas, Balzac, and Sand, among others.

“It was not without considerable hesitation that we undertook to bring that mass of profligacy before the eyes of the British public.  We feared that the very names now transcribed might seem to sully our page. . . . Such publications pervert not only private but public morals—they deprave not only individuals but nations, and are alternately the cause and the consequence of a spirit which threatens the whole fabric of European society.”

“We now arrive at an author, from a variety of circumstances the most remarkable of all.  Not less clever than Balzac, not less wicked than Raymond, GEORGE SAND—by the union of impassioned rhetoric and sensual ideas—carries to its most pernisious excess this species of demoralizing novel.  But how much is our surprise and disgust increased, when we find that GEORGE SAND is a pseudonyme, and that these lascivious tales—disgusting enough if written by a man, however young, or however vicious—are really the production of  a woman—a lady—a lady, if not of rank, at least of title—of Madame La Baronne du Devant! . . . [W]e, therefore, feel that we are entitled to examine Madame du Devant and her books, not merely with critical, but with personal severity; for, as the anomaly and mischief of a licentious publication by a woman is so much more impudent and odious than a similar offense in a man, so the natural rights of society would justify a severer chastisement.”

Online syllabus and course information: http://www.class.uidaho.edu/jgw/classes