George Sand Long Fiction Analysis
Faced with the enormous number of George Sand’s novels, literary critics quickly moved to divide them into categories. The traditional categories include feminist novels, socialistic novels, and rustic novels. While this oversimplification is inaccurate, it does help the reader to identify the major themes that recur in most of her novels.
Valentine
Valentine is a good example of the critics’ dilemma. The novel recounts a love story of a married noblewoman and an educated peasant that ends tragically with the death of the lovers. The plot is a Romantic one, both in the sense of “a love story” and in the literary-historical sense of the term, for it contains several of the essential themes of French Romanticism: the passing of time, the passing of love with time, and a search for the meaning of the universe beyond the limits of human life. In Valentine, Sand’s Bénédict is a melancholy, meditative person who resembles ChateaubriandFrançois-René de’s René. He is killed accidentally by a jealous husband, but Valentine, the heroine, dies from sorrow soon after his death. At first reading, the novel seems to be primarily Romantic, yet Valentine’s fruitless attempts to find personal happiness and satisfaction, despite her financially arranged marriage and her indifferent and absent husband, suggest classification among the feminist novels. The beautiful descriptions of the Berry countryside and details of the daily life of the peasants are characteristic of her rustic novels. The love affair between two people of different social classes suggests classification as a socialistic novel. The conclusion is obvious: Most of Sand’s novels contain Romantic elements, Romanesque elements, feminist elements, rustic elements, and socialist elements.
The novels that contain the highest percentage of feminist elements are the early ones. Clearly, Sand’s unhappy personal experiences were reflected in novels such as Indiana, in which the heroine leaves her despotic husband, is betrayed by her lover, and ultimately finds happiness with her cousin, who serves as a father figure for her and becomes her lover on a lush tropical island in a primitive paradise that owes something to Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre. Sand’s feminist novel par excellence is Lélia, which reinterprets the metaphysical dilemma of the Romantic hero in feminine terms.
Sand’s socialistic novels are generally less successful artistically than her work in other genres, perhaps because her theoretical digressions are not well integrated into the plots. One exception, The Companion of the Tour of France, was reedited by the University Press of Grenoble in the late 1980’s and then began to receive long-overdue critical attention. In addition to its story of the love between the lady of a manor and a carpenter-artist, the novel contains a study of secret trade guilds and a portrait of the daily life of workers—a class that was neglected by Balzac in La Comédie humaine (1829-1848; The Comedy of Human Life, 1885-1893, 1896; also known as The Human Comedy, 1895-1896, 1911). The Miller of Angibault is also a successful socialistic novel, but it contains many elements of the rustic novels as well. The Sin of Monsieur Antoine and La Ville noire expose the problems of factory workers, making Sand the only French novelist before Émile Zola to analyze seriously the effects of the Industrial Revolution.
Jeanne
Sand’s experiments with the rustic novel began with Jeanne , whose peasant heroine is compared to Joan of Arc and Napoleon. In the rustic novels, Sand saw herself as an intermediary between Paris and Nohant, between bourgeois and peasant. She hoped to bring about a reconciliation between the two by portraying the best qualities of the...
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country folk to make them acceptable to urban readers. She did not, however, neglect the very real problems of rural life. Her peasants are often hungry and overworked, but they have a noble character that enables them to conquer all obstacles and a resourcefulness that comes from living in harmony with nature.
Sand never claimed to be a realist, even though she documented her novels carefully. There are realistic elements in her psychological analyses, in her landscapes, and in her portrayal of the everyday life of workers and peasants. Nevertheless, what counted for Sand, as she states in the introduction to The Devil’s Pool, was “ideal truth” rather than “a slice of life.” She wanted to inspire readers to live up to their potential, in contrast to the productions of the realist and naturalist schools, which, she felt, depressed people by showing the ugly side of life. In her autobiography, she quotes Balzac as saying to her, “You search for man as he should be, while I take him as he is. Believe me, we are both right.”
Lélia
Lélia is a flawed masterpiece. Its lyric tone and mystical examination of God, love, the universe, and the nature of truth make it both a profound philosophical work and a difficult novel for most readers. The characters tend toward allegory: Lélia represents doubt, according to a document published in Sketches and Hints (1926); Trenmor, expiation and stoicism; Sténio, poetry and credulity; Magnus, superstition and repressed desire; and Pulchérie, the senses (as opposed to the mind or soul). They also represent different aspects of Sand’s own personality. She wrote in Journal intime (1926; The Intimate Journal, 1929), which was published with Sketches and Hints, “Magnus is my childhood; Sténio, my youth; Lélia is my maturity; Trenmor will perhaps be my old age. All these types have been in me.”
When Sand published Lélia in 1832, it had a succès de scandale. A novel by a woman treating explicitly the problem of female frigidity, briefly touching on lesbian sexuality, and creating a superior heroine to rival melancholy Romantic heroes (Chateaubriand’s René, Étienne de Senancour’s Obermann, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Werther, and Benjamin Constant’s Adolphe) was more than even Paris was prepared to accept. Sand’s passionate cry of suffering was so revealing, however, that Musset and many of her contemporaries called her “Lélia.”
Sand, who ordinarily did not rewrite novels, rewrote Lélia, cutting out the sexually explicit passages and transforming its profoundly skeptical and pessimistic tone into a more positive and progressive one. The second version, published in 1839, was chosen by the author to be included in an edition of her complete works. After that, the 1832 edition disappeared from view until André Maurois titled his 1952 biography Lélia: Ou, La Vie de George Sand (Lélia: The Life of George Sand, 1953). Maurois asserted that the first Lélia was, with Indiana and Consuelo, one of Sand’s finest novels and artistically superior to the 1839 version. In 1960, Pierre Reboul published the text of the 1832 Lélia, and scholars now generally agree with Maurois. Ósten Södergård published a comparison of the two editions in 1962 and showed how and why Sand changed her novel.
In the first Lélia, the heroine is presented to the reader as seen from afar by the young poet Sténio, who worships and fears her. The question the first part of the novel asks is whether Lélia will be able to love Sténio. Trenmor, a rehabilitated gambler resigned to a calm philosophical life, says no. Lélia is older and wiser than Sténio and so frustrated by unsatisfying love affairs that she is no longer capable of physical love. She proposes a more spiritual love, but the poet insists that ideal love unites the senses with the spirit. After many vain power struggles, Lélia leaves Sténio with her courtesan-sister Pulchérie, with whom he makes love, believing her to be Lélia. In this way, Lélia hopes to teach him that sensual love is unreliable. Instead, Sténio, disillusioned by the experience, decides that pleasure alone is real and throws himself into debauchery. Finally, he drowns himself in a lake; while Lélia weeps over his body, she is strangled by Magnus, a priest who has become an atheist and has been driven insane by his desire for Lélia. At the end, Lélia and Sténio, the lovers who could not agree on earth, are united as stars in Heaven; and the philosopher Trenmor continues his pilgrimage alone.
The love story at the center of Lélia is less important than Lélia’s desperate search for God, herself, and truth—what Maria Espinosa, the translator of the original version of Lélia into English, calls the “spiritual odyssey” of Lélia and, of course, of Sand herself. Lélia searches for a man who is perfect, like God; not finding one, she makes a god of the man she loves. When she realizes her mistake, it is too late for her ever to obtain the fresh, pure love of which she dreams. She has lived too much without enjoyment, and her fantasies surpass any possible realization. This makes her doubt God and hate herself while she is filled with a burning and insatiable physical desire. Seeking relief in a year’s voluntary claustration, Lélia waits in vain to achieve the stoic resignation of Trenmor, who is emotionally dead. Since, for her, physical love represents a submission of the woman to the man, she finds it distasteful and tries to solve her dilemma by taking the dominant male role in love scenes. For this reason, she treats Sténio like her son and loves him most when he is passive—sleeping or dead. Unable to find a solution to her problems, Lélia is finally content to be killed by Magnus.
In the 1839 version, Lélia becomes a nun who teaches girls how to resist men and reforms the Church. Trenmor becomes a reformed murderer and acquires a secret identity as Valmarina, a benefactor of the poor and needy as well as the head of a mystico-political secret society somewhat like the Italina Carbonaros. Even though Lélia dies in disgrace at the end of the second version, the reader feels that she will be vindicated. Both Trenmor and Lélia thus find meaningful things to do with their lives as Sand passes from Romantic pessimism to preach active reform of society.
Mauprat
The reader who finds the lyric and philosophical passages of Lélia long and painful will be enchanted by Mauprat. The latter, a more traditional novel, combines the beautiful exterior scenes of Sand’s rustic novels with a historical adventure story of the type written by Sir Walter Scott or Alexandre Dumas, père. Political and philosophical reflections are carefully woven into the fabric of the work so as not to impede the swift movement of the plot toward its suspense-filled conclusion, for Mauprat also contains a detective story. These disparate elements are skillfully united to form a bildungsroman. The central focus of the novel is the education of Bernard de Mauprat, that is, the transformation of a wild barbarian interested only in sensual gratification into a sensitive, loving, and cultured man. This transformation is the work of Bernard’s cousin Edmée, who uses his love for her to force him to change.
From the outside, Edmée seems to resemble Lélia. She is cold and proud; she dominates Bernard and treats him like her son. Edmée is not frigid, however; she merely appears that way because she suppresses her own desire for Bernard and patiently waits for him to become her equal, emotionally and morally, before she agrees to marry him. Meanwhile, like Sand herself, Edmée carries a knife with which to commit suicide if necessary to protect her virtue.
Bernard, who was taken at age seven by his grandfather Tristan de Mauprat to a disintegrating castle, grew up in an atmosphere of violence and crime as his marauding uncles filled the countryside with terror, re-creating in the eighteenth century their family’s feudal domination of the peasants. Bernard’s slow progress from this life of darkness to the light of civilization begins when Edmée de Mauprat, the sole heir of the respectable younger branch of the family, loses her way in the forest and is captured by the evil uncles. She convinces Bernard, who only wants to make love to her, to rescue her and flee from the castle with her. In order to do this, she promises Bernard that she will belong to no other man before him.
This solemn promise shapes the future of both the young people. Bernard, who is seeking only instant physical gratification, slowly and painfully discovers that Edmée will withhold this from him for many years, while he, like the medieval knight, is forced to overcome obstacles to merit her love. Chivalrous motifs are reinforced by a young man named Arthur, who serves as Bernard’s friend and guide in the American Revolution, explaining to him what he must do to earn the favors of the fair maiden. The medieval knight had to conquer dragons (exterior enemies) while Bernard must conquer his own savage nature. For Edmée, on the other hand, this promise to make love is tantamount to a promise of marriage.
Sand states in her preface to Mauprat that the trauma of the legal separation from her husband made her begin to reflect upon the dream of an ideal marriage and an eternal love; thus, Bernard de Mauprat, who narrates his story at the age of eighty, tells his listeners that he loved only one woman in his entire life, before his marriage, during his marriage, and after her death. This is certainly a strong response to Sand’s contemporaries, who criticized her for attacking the institution of marriage.
As the love story gives unity to the plot, the theme of the perfectibility of humankind forms the center of the philosophical framework of the novel. Here, Sand is undoubtedly following one of her first mentors, Rousseau. In a sense, Edmée is like Julie in Rousseau’s Julie: Ou, La Nouvelle Héloïse (1761; Eloise: Or, A Series of Original Letters, 1761; also known as Julie: Or, The New Eloise, 1968; better known as The New Héloïse), who moves from a passionate lover, Saint-Preux, to a reasonable husband, Wolmar, creating a utopia out of her farm. The major difference is that Sand unites Saint-Preux and Wolmar to form one character, Bernard. Edmée does create a utopia with the aid of Patience, an old hermit who gives up his solitary lifestyle to help Edmée build a life of dignity and honor for the peasants. Bernard and Edmée are happy to give up their wealth with the arrival of the French Revolution, which they see as a step toward a more equitable society.
In Mauprat, Sand uses the medieval trappings, the plot of an adventure story, and the psychological developments of a love story to interest her reader in the essential message—that the human race can improve with education. This progressive theme signals Sand’s own movement toward a more optimistic view of the world.
Consuelo
Consuelo and its sequel, The Countess of Rudolstadt, form, like Mauprat, a bildungsroman. This time, however, the person who learns and grows by overcoming obstacles is a woman. Consuelo, considered by many to be Sand’s masterpiece, has been called France’s answer to Goethe’s saga of Wilhelm Meister. The novel is set in the eighteenth century, in Venice, Bohemia, Vienna, and Berlin—for Consuelo is a talented singer, born in Spain of a Gypsy mother, who travels in Europe perfecting her voice and developing her career. The character is roughly based on Pauline Garcia Viardot, a close friend of Sand; as a prototype of the Romantic artist, Consuelo also shares many traits with Sand herself. Consuelo has the misfortune of being ugly until she is transformed by her music. As Béatrice Didier has pointed out, her ugliness may not be a disadvantage after all, because it saves her from easy success and venal protectors, enabling her to keep her independence and grow in her art.
The bildungsroman operates on three levels, as Consuelo follows an artistic itinerary that leads to her becoming a composer, a political itinerary that makes her aware of the evils of despotism and dedicated to helping the poor and suffering, and a spiritual itinerary that culminates in her initiation into the secret society of the Invisibles, who work to correct social injustice. Consuelo’s artistic voyage begins when the famous maestro Porpora agrees to give the poor girl free music lessons in Venice. After Porpora teaches her the fundamentals of her art, Consuelo becomes an opera star. At this point, Porpora feels he must warn her to beware of men—both would-be protectors such as Count Justiani and would-be lovers such as Anzoletto, her childhood friend. Porpora persuades Consuelo to devote her life to art and sends her off to the Castle of the Giants in Bohemia to give music lessons to the young Baroness Amélie.
In this castle, which has all the subterranean passageways and mysteries of the gothic novel, Consuelo meets Albert de Rudolstadt, Amélie’s cousin, who is subject to temporary mental disorders during which he imagines that he is the reincarnation of the Prince Podiebrand or the Hussite hero Jean Ziska. He plays violin music that has a magical influence on Consuelo. Albert and his deranged peasant friend Zdenko teach her the history of Bohemia and its suffering under political and religious oppression. They introduce her to folk music and begin her initiation into the occult. After saving Albert’s life by carrying him through secret underground passages, tunnels, and wells, Consuelo becomes ill and is nursed back to health by Albert, who falls in love with her. She refuses to marry him and leaves the castle for Vienna to pursue her study of music.
On the trip to Vienna, Consuelo dresses up like a man to protect herself. This loss of female identity gives her a freedom that helps her develop as an artist. She accidentally meets young Joseph Haydn, who accompanies her on the long trip on foot. As a result of this journey, she learns about war, despotism, and the oppression of the peasants. In Vienna, she finds Porpora again and learns about tyranny from Maria Theresa.
As she is leaving Vienna for Berlin, Consuelo receives a message that Albert is dying. She rushes to the Rudolstadt castle and agrees to marry him in extremis. After his death, she renounces his wealth and title and continues on to Berlin, where she is imprisoned by Frederick the Great for conspiracy. In prison, she discovers the joys of musical composition and memorizes her creations, moving even closer to traditional folk music. She is freed from prison by the Invisibles, who take her to a palace where she studies their mysteries and decides to become a member of their secret society. She falls in love with her mysterious rescuer Liverani, only to discover that Albert is still alive and an Invisible. Forced to choose between love and duty, Consuelo follows her higher instincts and chooses Albert, who reveals that he is Liverani. After her initiation into the Invisibles, which takes place in another castle, with the symbolic name of Castle of the Grail, the marriage of Consuelo and Albert is renewed.
In the epilogue, the reader learns that the Invisibles have been forced underground and that Consuelo has lost her voice and Albert his reason. She has become a composer writing music for Albert’s poems. They wander with their children through the countryside, bringing hope to the poor and needy. Consuelo is thus as poor at the end of the novel as she was at the beginning, but she has become the “Good Goddess of Poverty.” She has fulfilled her artistic destiny by becoming a creator—a complete Romantic artist. She has fulfilled her political and spiritual destiny by helping the needy. Finally, she has fulfilled her destiny as a woman by uniting physical and spiritual love in her relationship with Albert. She is the whole woman Lélia wanted to be. She lives up to her name “Consuelo” by bringing “consolation” to those around her.
The religious and political philosophy of Albert and the Invisibles, which Consuelo adopts at the end of the novel, was inspired by Pierre Leroux, a Socialist thinker whom Sand admired. In Consuelo, the Invisibles base their doctrine on a belief in absolute equality between sexes and classes. They also proclaim the right of the people to participate as fully as the priests in religious sacraments. Their motto, The Cup to the People, refers to the communion chalice. This desire to reform the Catholic Church was a constant preoccupation of Sand, best expressed in Spiridion, which develops a religious philosophy of history. Parallel to her desire to reform the Church is her desire to reform society, which finds in Consuelo its most complete expression.
This novel, which is epic in scope, has been called a novel of initiation as well as a bildungsroman. Because of its length, it is a challenge to most modern readers. Its beautiful landscapes, fascinating characters, and exciting plot, however, reward readers for their perseverance.
The Devil’s Pool
If Consuelo can be likened to an epic poem, The Devil’s Pool is more like a folk song. Considered the perfect example of Sand’s rustic novels, it is short, simple, and tightly structured. The novel has only two major characters, Germain, a thirty-year-old widower with three children, and Marie, a poverty-stricken sixteen-year-old girl. The title of the novel leads one to think that the occult might play as large a role in this novel as in Consuelo. Actually, the Devil’s Pool, which forms the center of thenarrative structure, is magic only because it makes people lose their way in the forest at night. Marie and Germain, accompanied by Germain’s oldest child, Pierre, lose their way near this pool and there discover the truth about themselves—that they love each other. The major theme of the novel is thus quasi-biblical: “Those who think they are lost are found,” or “One finds one’s way by losing it.”
The conflict in the plot arises from the fact that Germain must remarry to ensure the economic viability of the family unit, although at first he has no desire to do so. Marie is considered an unfit wife for him because of her youth and poverty. In the forest, however, she shows her true character—she is provident, attuned to nature, and clever at caring for children. After Germain recognizes her special gifts, he still has to persuade the elders of his family that she is an appropriate bride for him. Until the end of the story, he is uncertain whether Marie returns his love.
The ideological basis of this novel springs from Rousseau’s theories about the purity of country life and the corruption of the cities. Germain and Marie, the innocent country people, find their opposites in the vain, materialistic Cathérine Guérin, a widow whom Germain was supposed to marry, and the Farmer of Ormeaux, the licentious master who attempts to seduce Marie. It is important to note that they are both members of the middle class as well as inhabitants of a village. Sand’s vision of the country, however, is more than simply an ideological construct. She grew up in the country, and her portraits of the peasants of Berry have done much to preserve the language and folklore that were beginning to disappear.
There is an innate conflict in the rustic novels between Sand’s desire to conserve and preserve a disappearing way of life and her avowed purpose of reforming society by promoting understanding between the bourgeois and the peasant. Her rustic novels have been read for more than a century as tributes to the status quo and have been used by the French educational system to keep people in their place. This is clearly not what Sand intended when she wrote in the introduction to The Devil’s Pool, “It is necessary for Lazarus to leave his dungheap so that the poor will no longer rejoice in the death of the rich. It is necessary that all be happy so that the happiness of the few may not be criminal and cursed by God.” In this introduction, Sand explains that the novel was inspired by an engraving by Hans Holbein the Younger showing death as the only recompense for a life of hard labor in the fields. Sand believed that nineteenth century laborers should have life rather than death as a reward and that inequities should be rectified on earth rather than in Heaven. In this way, The Devil’s Pool joins the technical perfection of a new genre of novel with an expansion of Sand’s constant concern for the suffering of humanity.