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Georges Sand

Person - Writer Comprehensive Aktualizováno: 2025-11-23

Research Status: Comprehensive Last Updated: 2025-11-23 Diary Coverage: Book 14 (1880) Type: Person - Writer

Overview

Georges Sand (pseudonym of Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin, 1804-1876) was one of the most famous French writers of the 19th century. She was known for her prolific output, her unconventional lifestyle (including wearing men's clothing and smoking in public), her love affairs with famous men (including Chopin and Musset), and her novels exploring social issues.

Literary Career

Sand wrote over 70 novels, numerous plays, political texts, and autobiographical works. Her major themes included:

  • Rural life and pastoral settings
  • Social class and inequality
  • Women's rights and independence
  • Romantic love across class boundaries
  • Socialist and utopian ideals

Famous Works

  • Indiana (1832) - Her first major success
  • Lélia (1833) - Philosophical novel about female sexuality and independence
  • La Mare au diable (1846) - Pastoral novel
  • La Petite Fadette (1849) - Rural romance
  • Valentine (1832) - Novel Marie is reading in 1880
  • Le Marquis de Villemer (1861) - Successfully adapted to theater

Marie's Critique (October 9, 1880)

Marie's response to Sand is complex and revealing:

Her Criticisms:

1. Unsympathetic style: "An writer with whom I do not sympathize" - lacks the vigor and boldness of Gautier 2. Boring plots: "How can one read three hundred pages of 'Valentine' and 'Bénédict' accompanied by an uncle, a gardener, what do I know!" 3. Social leveling through love: "Always social leveling through love, which is ignoble" - "That equality be established, that's admirable, but let it not be due to sexual whims" - "The countess in love with her valet and dissertations on that subject!" 4. Lacks substance: "Pretty novels, pretty countryside descriptions... but I would like something more" 5. Aggravating effect: Reading Valentine "interests me enough to finish it" but "it seems this reading debases me"

What She Prefers:

Marie contrasts Sand unfavorably with writers she finds more compelling:

  • Balzac - Never boring
  • Alexandre Dumas (both père and fils) - Never boring
  • Émile Zola - Never boring (though she's currently "in a fight" with him over his political attacks)
  • Alphonse Daudet - "Novels sown with just observations, true things, felt things. One lives in there"
  • Alfred de Musset - Never boring
  • Victor Hugo - Even in his most "romantically mad prose" (Han d'Islande), "one feels the genius"

Why This Critique Matters

Marie's response to Sand is significant because:

1. Gender complexity: As a young woman with artistic and feminist ambitions, one might expect Marie to admire Sand, the most successful female writer of the century. Her rejection is thus notable.

2. Class consciousness: Marie's aristocratic background makes her recoil from Sand's theme of cross-class romances ("countess in love with her valet")

3. Aesthetic standards: Marie values vitality, truth, and "genius" over careful craft and moral purpose

4. Independence of judgment: She's willing to criticize a canonical woman writer, showing intellectual independence

5. Self-awareness: She notes "these are things one shouldn't say" and worries about appearing pretentious, but says them anyway

Historical Context

By 1880, four years after Sand's death, she was already becoming a canonical figure in French literature. Marie is reading her at age 22, part of her self-education as a cultured person, but refuses to simply accept the critical consensus.

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