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SAND, GEORGE (1804-1876)
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See also:SAND, See also:GEORGE (1804-1876) , the See also:pseudonym of Madame Amandine Lucile Aurore Dudevant, nee See also:Dupin, the most prolific authoress in the See also:history of literature, and unapproached among the See also:women novelists of See also:France. Her See also:life was as See also:strange and adventurous as any of her novels, which are for the most See also:part idealized versions of the multifarious incidents of her life. In her self-revelations she followed See also: " She will be fortunate," said the aunt, " she was See also:born among the See also:roses to the See also:sound of See also:music." Passing by her infantine recollections, which go back further than even those of See also:Dickens, we find her at the See also:age of three See also:crossing the See also:Pyrenees to join her father who was on See also:Murat's See also:staff, occupying with her parents a See also:suite of rooms in the royal See also:palace, adopted as the child of the See also:regiment, nursed by rough old sergeants, and dressed in a See also:complete suit of See also:uniform to please the general. For the next ten years she lived at Nohant, near La Cha.tre in Berri, the country house of her grandmother. Here her character was shaped; here she imbibed that passionate love of country scenes and country life which neither See also:absence, politics nor dissipation could uproot; here she learnt to understand the ways and thoughts of the peasants, and laid up that See also:rich See also:store of scenes and characters which a marvellously retentive memory enabled her to draw upon at will. The progress of her mind during these See also:early years well deserves to be recorded. See also:Education, in the strict sense of the word, she had none. A few months after her return from See also:Spain her father was killed by a fall from his See also:horse. He was a See also:man of remarkable See also:literary gifts as well as a See also:good soldier. " Character," says George Sand, " is in a See also:great measure hereditary: if my readers wish to know me they . must know my father." On his See also:death the mother resigned, though not without a struggle, the care of Aurore to her See also:grand-mother, Mme. Dupin de Francueil, a good representative of the ancien regime. Though her husband was a See also:patron of Rousseau, she herself had narrowly escaped the See also:guillotine, and had only See also:half imbibed the ideas of the Revolution. In her son's lifetime she had, for his See also:sake, condoned the mesalliance, but it was impossible for the stately See also:chatelaine and her See also:low-born daughter-in-See also:law to live in See also:peace under the same roof. She was jealous as a See also:lover of the child's See also:affection, and the struggle between the mother and grandmother was one of the bitterest of Aurore's childish troubles. Next to the grandmother, the most important See also:person in the See also:household at Nohant was Deschatres. He was an ex-See also:abbe who had shown his devotion to his See also:mistress when her life was threatened, and henceforward was installed at Nohant as factotum. He was maire of the See also:village, See also:tutor to Aurore's half-See also:brother, and, in addition to his other duties, undertook the education of the girl. The tutor was no more eager to See also:teach than the See also:pupil to learn. He, too, was a See also:disciple of Rousseau, believed in the education of nature, and allowed his Sophie to wander at her own sweet will. At See also:odd See also:hours of lessons she picked up a smattering of Latin, music and natural See also:science, but most days were holidays and spent in country rambles and See also:games with village children. Her favourite books were See also:Tasso, Atala and See also:Paul et Virginie. A See also:simple refrain of a childish See also:song or the monotonous chaunt of the ploughman touched a hidden chord and thrilled her to tears. She invented a deity of her own, a mysterious Corambe, half See also:pagan and half See also:Christian, and like See also:Goethe erected to him a rustic See also:altar of the greenest grass, the softest See also:moss and the brightest pebbles. From the See also:free out-See also:door life at Nohant she passed at thirteen to the See also:convent of the See also:English See also:Augustinians at Paris, where for the first two years she never went outside the walls. Nothing better shows the plasticity of her character than the ease with which she adapted herself to this sudden See also:change. The volume which describes her conventual life is as graphic as See also:Miss See also:Bronte s See also:Villette, but we can only dwell on one passage of it. Tired of mad pranks, in a See also:fit of See also:home-sickness, she found herself one evening in the convent See also:chapel.
" I had forgotten all; I knew not what was passing in me; with rry soul rather than my senses, I breathed an See also:air of ineffable sweetness. All at once a sudden See also:shock passed through my whole being, my eyes swam, and I seemed wrapped in a dazzling See also: It reads more like a See also:chapter from the life of Ste Therese or Madame See also:Guyon than of the author of Lelia. Yet no one can doubt the sincerity of her narrative, or even the permanence of her religious feelings under all her many phases of faith and aberrations of conduct. A See also:recent critic has sought in See also:religion the See also:clue to her character and the mainspring of her genius. Only in her See also:case religion must be taken in an even more restricted sense than See also:Matthew See also:Arnold's " morality touched by emotion." For her there was no categorical imperative, no moral See also:code See also:save to follow the promptings of her heart. " Tenderness " she had abundantly, and it revealed itself not only in effusive sentimentality, as with Rousseau and See also:Chateaubriand, but in active benevolence; " justice " too she had in so far as she sincerely wished that all men should See also:share alike her happiness; but of " holiness," that sense of See also:awe and reverence that was felt in See also:divers kinds and degrees by See also:Isaiah, See also:Sophocles, See also:Virgil and St Paul, she had not a rudimenatry conception. Again in 182o Aurore exchanged the See also:restraint of a convent for freedom, being recalled to Nohant by Mme de Francueil, who had no intention of letting her granddaughter grow up a devote. She rode across country with her brother, she went out See also:shooting with Deschatres, she sat by the cottage doors on the long summer evenings and heard the See also:flax-dressers tell their tales of witches and warlocks. She was a considerable linguist and knew English, See also:Italian and some Latin, though she never tackled See also:Greek. She read widely though unsystematically, studying See also:philosophy in See also:Aristotle, See also:Leibnitz, See also:Locke and See also:Condillac, and feeding her See also:imagination with Rene and Childe Harold. Her See also:confessor See also:lent her the Genius of See also:Christianity, and to this See also:book she ascribes the first change in her religious views. She renounced once for all the See also:asceticism and See also:isolation of the De imitatione for the more genial and sympathetic Christianity of Chateaubriand. Yet she still clung to old associations, and on her grandmother's death was about to return to her convent, but was dissuaded by her See also:friends, who found her a husband. Casimir Dudevant, whom she married on the 11th of See also:December 1822, was the natural son of a See also:Baron Dudevant. He had retired at an early age from the army and was living an idle life at home as a See also:gentleman farmer. Her husband, though he afterwards deteriorated, seems at that See also:time to have been neither better nor worse than the Berrichon squires around him, and the first years of her married life, during which her son Maurice and her daughter Solange were born, except for lovers' quarrels, were passed in peace and quietness, though signs were not wanting of the coming See also:storm. Among these must be mentioned her friendship with See also:Aura :en de Seze, See also:advocate-general at Bourdeau. De Seze was a See also:middle-aged lawyer with a philosophic turn of mind, and Madame Dudevant for two years kept up with him an intimate correspondence. The friendship was purely platonic, but the husband felt or affected See also:jealousy, and resented an intimacy which he from his See also:total lack of culture was unable to share. The See also:breach quickly widened. He on his part was more and more repelled by a See also:superior woman determined to live her own intellectual life, and she on hers discovered that she was mated, if not to a See also:clown, at least to a hobereau whose whole heart was in his See also:cattle and his turnips. So long as the conventionalities were preserved she endured it, but when her husband took to drinking and made love to the maids under her very eyes she resolved to break a yoke that had grown intolerable. The last See also:straw that determined See also:action was the See also:discovery of a See also:paper docketed " Not to be opened till after my death," which was nothing but a railing See also:accusation against herself. She at once quitted Nohant, taking with her Solange, and in 1831 an amicable separation was agreed upon, by which her whole See also:estate was surrendered to the husband with the stipulation that she should receive an See also:allowance of £120 a See also:year. She had regained her See also:liberty, and made no See also:secret of her intention to use it to the full. She endeavoured unsuccessfully to eke out her irregularly paid allowance by those expedients to which reduced gentlewomen are driven—fancywork and See also:painting fans and See also:snuff-boxes; she lived in a See also:garret and was often unable to allow herself the luxury of a fire. It was only as a last resource that she tried literature. Her first See also:apprenticeship was served under Delatouche, the editor of See also:Figaro. He was a native of Berri, like herself, a stern but kindly taskmaster who treated her much as Dr See also: The one wished to throw Indiana into the common stock, the other refused to lend his name, or even part of his name, to a See also:work in which he had had no share. The novel was received with instant See also:acclamation, and Sainte-Beuve only confirmed the See also:judgment of the public when he pronounced in the Globe that this new author (then to him unknown) had struck a new and See also:original vein and was destined to go far. Delatouche was the first to throw himself at her feet and bid her forget all the hard things he had said of her. Indiana is a direct transcript of the author's See also:personal experiences (the disagreeable husband is M. Dudevant to the life), and an exposition of her theory of sexual relations which is founded thereon. To many critics it seemed that she had said her whole say and that nothing but replicas could follow. See also:Valentine, which was published in the same year, indicated that it was but the first chapter in a life of endless adventures, and that the imagination which turned the crude facts into See also:poetry, and the See also:fancy which played about them like a See also:rainbow, were inexhaustible. As a novel Valentine has little to commend it; the See also:plot is feeble and the characters shadowy. Only in the descriptions of scenery, which here resemble too much See also:purple patches, does George Sand reveal her true See also:inspiration, the See also:artistic qualities by which she will live. No one was more conscious than George Sand herself of her strength and of her weakness. In a See also:preface to a later edition she tells us how the novel came to be written, and, though it anticipates events, this See also:revelation of herself may best be given here. " After the unexpected literary success of Indiana I returned to Berri in 1832 and found a See also:pleasure in painting the scenes with which I had been See also:familiar from a child. Ever since those early days I had `elt the impulse to describe them, but as is the case with all profound emotions, whether intellectual or moral, what we most See also:desire to realize to ourselves we are the least inclined to reveal to the world at large. This little nook of Berri, this unknown Vallee Noire, this quiet and unpretentious landscape, which must be sought to find it and loved to be admired, was the See also:sanctuary of my first and latest reveries. For twenty-two years I have lived amongst these pollarded trees, these rutty roads, beside these tangled thickets and streams along whose See also:banks only children and See also:sheep can pass. All this had charms for me alone and did not deserve to be revealed to idle curiosity. Why betray the incognito of this modest country-See also:side without See also:historical association or picturesque sites to commend it to the See also:antiquary or the tourist? The Vallee Noire, so it seemed to me, was part and See also:parcel of myself, the framework in which my life was set, the native See also:costume that I had always worn—what worlds away from the silks and satins that are suited for the public See also:stage. If I could have foreseen what a stir my writings would make, I think I should have jealously guarded the privacy of this sanctuary where, till then, I perhaps was the only soul who had fed the artist's visions and the poet's dreams. But I had no such anticipation; I never gave it a thought. I was compelled to write and I wrote. I let myself be carried away by the secret See also:charm of the air I breathed; my native air, I might almost See also:call it. The descriptive parts of my novel found favour. The plot provoked some lively See also:criticism on the See also:anti-matrimonial doctrines that I was alleged to have broached before in Indiana. In both novels I pointed out the dangers and pains of an ill-assorted marriage. I thought I had simply been See also:writing a story, and discovered that I had unwittingly been See also:preaching See also:Saint-Simonianism. I was not then at an age for reflecting on social grievances. I was too young to do more than see and See also:note facts, and thanks to my natural indolence and that See also:passion for the See also:concrete, which is at once the joy and the weakness of artists, I should perhaps always have remained at that stage if my somewhat pedantic critics had not driven me to reflect and painfully See also:search after the ultimate causes of which till then I had only grasped the effects. But I was so shrewdly taxed with posing as a strong-minded woman and a philosopher that one See also:fine See also:day I said to myself, ' What, I wonder, is philosophy?' " Her liaison with Jules Sandeau, which lasted more than a year, was abruptly terminated by the discovery in their apartment on an unexpected return from Nohant of une blanchisseuse quelconque. For a See also:short while she was broken hearted:—" My heart is a See also:cemetery!" she wrote to Sainte-Beuve. " A See also:necropolis," was the comment of her discarded lover when years later the remark was repeated to him. Her third novel, Lelia (1833), is in the same vein, a stronger and more outspoken diatribe against society and the marriage law. Lelia is a See also:female See also:Manfred, and See also:Dumas had some See also:reason to complain that George Sand was giving them " du See also:Lord See also:Byron au kilo." But a new chapter in her life was now to open. In her despair she turned for comfort and counsel to Sainte-Beuve, now constituted her See also:regular father confessor. This ghostly See also:Sir See also:Pandarus recommended new friendships, but she was hard to please. Dumas was " trop commis-voyageur," See also:Jouffroy too serenely virtuous and See also:Musset " trop See also:dandy." See also:Merimee was tried for a See also:week, but the cool cynic and the perfervid apostle of women's rights proved mutually repulsive. See also:Alfred de Musset was introduced, and the two natures leapt together as by elective affinity. The moral aspect has been given by Mr See also:Swinburne in an See also:epigram: —" Alfred was a terrible flirt and George did not behave as a perfect gentleman." Towards the end of 1833 George Sand, after winning the reluctant consent of Musset's mother, set out in the poet's See also:company for See also:Italy, and in See also:January 1834 the pair reached See also:Venice, staying first at the Hotel Danieli and then in lodgings. At first it was a veritable See also:honeymoon; conversation never flagged and either found in the other his soul's See also:complement. But there is a limit to love-making, and George Sand, always See also:practical, 133 set to work to provide the means of living. Musset, though he depended on her exertions, was first bored and then irritated at the sight of this terrible vache a ecrire, whose pen was going for eight hours a day, and sought diversion in the cafes and other less. reputable resorts of pleasure. The See also:con-sequence was a See also:nervous illness with some of the symptoms of See also:delirium tremens, through which George Sand nursed him with tenderness and care. But with a strange want of delicacy, to use the mildest See also:term, she made love at the same time to a young Venetian See also:doctor whom she had called in, by name Pagello. The pair went off and found their way eventually to Paris, leaving Musset in Italy, deeply wounded in his affections, but, to do him justice, taking all the blame for the rupture on himself. George Sand soon tired of her new love, and even before she had given him his See also:conge was dying to be on again with the old. She cut off her See also:hair and sent it to Musset as a token of penitence, but Musset, though he still flirted with her, never quite forgave her infidelity and refused to admit her to his deathbed. Among the See also:mass of See also:romans a clef and See also:pamphlets which the See also:adventure produced, two only have any literary importance, Musset's Confessions d'un enfant du siecle and George Sand's See also:Elie et lui. In the former woman appears as the See also:serpent whose trail is over all; in the latter, written twenty-five years after the event, she is the See also:guardian See also:angel abused and maltreated by men. Lui et elle, the rejoinder of the poet's brother Paul de Musset, was even more a See also:travesty of the facts with no redeeming See also:graces of style. It remains to trace the See also:influence, direct or indirect, of the poet on the novelist. Jacques was the first outcome of the See also:journey to Italy, and in precision and splendour of style it marks a distinct progress. The See also:motive of this and of the succeeding novels of what may be called her second See also:period is free (not to be confounded with promiscuous) love. The See also:hero, who is none other than George Sand in man's disguise, makes See also:confession of faith:—" I have never imposed constancy on myself. When I have felt that love was dead, I have said so without shame or remorse and have obeyed See also:Providence that was leading me elsewhere." And the runaway wife writes to her lover:—" O my dear See also:Octave, we shall never pass a See also:night together without first kneeling down and praying for Jacques." Love is a divine See also:instinct: to love is to be virtuous; follow the dictates of your heart and you cannot go wrong--such is the doctrine that George Sand preached and practised. In See also:Les Lettres d'un voyageur, which ran in the Revue See also:des deux mondes between 1834 and 1836, we have not only impressions of travel, but the direct impressions of men and things not distorted by the exigencies of a novel. They reveal to us the true and better side of George Sand, the loyal and devoted friend, the mother who under happier conditions might have been reputed a See also:Roman matron. We could not choose a more perfect specimen of her style than the See also:allegory under which she pictures the " might have been." " I care little about growing old; I care far more not to grow old alone, but I have never met the being with whom I could have chosen to live and See also:die, or if I ever met him I knew not how to keep him. Listen to a story and weep. There was a good artist called Watelet, the best aquafortis engraver of his day. He loved See also:Marguerite Lecomte, and taught her to engrave as well as himself. She left husband and home to go and live with him. The world condemned them; then, as they were poor and modest, it forgot them. See also:Forty years afterwards their See also:retreat was discovered. In a cottage in the environs of Paris called Le See also:Moulin joli, there. sat at the same table an old man See also:engraving and an old woman whom he called his meuniere also engraving. The last See also:design they were at work upon represented the Moulin joli, the house of Marguerite, with the See also:device Cur See also:valle permutem Sabina divitias operosiores? It hangs in my room over a portrait the original of which no one here has seen. For a year the person who gave me this portrait sat with me every night at a little table and lived by the same work. At daybreak we consulted together on our work for the day, and at night we supped at the same little table, chatting the while on See also:art, on sentiment, on the future. The future See also:broke faith with us. Pray for me, 0 Marguerite Lecomte ! " The Everard of the Lettres introduces us to a new and for the time a dominant influence on the life and writings. Miche'i de See also:Bourges was the counsel whose eloquent pleadings brought the suit for a judicial separation to a successful issue in 1836.1 Unlike her former lovers, he was a man of masterful will, a budge philosopher who carried her See also:intellect by storm before he laid See also:siege to her heart. He preached republicanism to her by the See also:hour, and even locked her up in her bedroom to reflect on his sermons. She was but half converted, and fled before long from a republic in which art and poetry had no place. Other celebrities who figure in the Lettres under a transparent disguise are See also:Liszt and Mme d'See also:Agoult (known to literature as See also:Daniel Stern), whom she met in See also:Switzerland and entertained for some months at Nohant. Liszt, in after years when they had drifted apart, wrote of her: " George Sand catches her butterfly and tames it in her cage by feeding it on See also:flowers and See also:nectar—this is the love period. Then she sticks her See also:pin into it when it struggles—that is the conge and it always comes from her. Afterwards she vivisects it, stuffs it, and adds it to her collection of heroes for novels." There is some truth in the See also:satire, but it wholly misrepresents her rupture with See also:Chopin. To explain this we must open a new chapter of the life in which George Sand appears as the devoted mother. The letters to her daughter Solange, which have recently been published, irresistibly recall the letters of Mme de See also:Sevigne to Mme de Grignan, Solange, who inherited all her mother's See also:wild blood with none of her genius, on the See also:eve of a marriage that had been arranged with a Berrichon gentleman, ran away with Clesinger, a sculptor to whom she had sat for her bust. George Sand not only forgave the elopement and hushed up the See also:scandal by a private marriage, but she settled the young couple in Paris and made over to them nearly one-half of her available See also:property. Clesinger turned out a thankless scapegrace and George Sand was at last compelled to refuse to admit him to Nohant. In the domestic See also:quarrel that ensued Solange, who was a very Vivien, got the ear of Chopin. He upbraided the mother with her hard-heartedness, and when she resented his interference he departed in a huff and they never met again. The mention of Liszt has led us to anticipate the end of the story, and we must revert to 1836, when the acquaintance began. She was then living in Paris, a few doors from her friend Mme d'Agoult, and the two set up a common See also:salon in the Hotel de France. Here she met two men, one of whom indoctrinated her with religious See also:mysticism, the other with advanced See also:socialism, See also:Lamennais and See also:Pierre See also:Leroux. In the case of Lamennais the disciple outstripped the master. She flung herself into Lamennais's cause and wrote many unpaid articles in his See also:organ, Le Monde, but they finally split on the questions of labour and of women's rights, and she complained that Lamennais first dragged her forwards and then abused her for going too fast. The Lettres a Marcie (1837) are a testimony to his ennobling and spiritualizing See also:personality. Socialism was a more lasting phase, but her natural good sense revolted at the extravagant mum- meries of Pere See also:Enfantin and she declined the See also:office of high priestess. It was doubtless a revulsion of feeling against the See also:doctrinaires and in particular against the puritanic reign of See also:Michel that made her turn to Chopin. She found the See also:maestro towards the end of 1837 dispirited by a temporary See also:eclipse of popularity and in the first stage of his fatal malady, and carried him off to See also:winter with her in the See also:south. How she roughed it on an See also:island unknown to tourists is told in Un hiver a Majorque (1842), a book of travel that may take See also:rank with See also:Heine's Reisebilder. In nearly all George Sand's loves there was a strong See also:strain of motherly feeling. Chopin was first petted by her like a spoilt See also:darling and then nursed for years like a sick child. During this, her second period, George Sand allowed herself to be the See also:mouthpiece of others—" un See also:echo qui embellissait la voix," as Delatouche expressed it. Spiridion (1838) and Les See also:Sept conies de la See also:lyre (184o) are mystic echoes of Lamennais. Le See also:Corn pagnon du tour de France (1841), Les Maitres mosalstes 1 The final See also:settlement was concluded in 1836. Mme Dudevant was granted See also:sole legal rights over the two children and her Paris home was restored to her. In return she made over to her husband 40,000 fr. vested in the funds.and Le See also:Meunier d'Angibault (1845), Le Peche de M. See also:Antoine (1847) are all socialistic novels, though they are much more, and good in spite of the socialism. Consuelo (1842–1844) and its sequel La Comtesse de See also:Rudolstadt (1843–1845) are fantaisies a la Chopin, though the stage on which they are played is the Venice of Musset. Chopin is the See also:Prince Karol of Lucrezia Floriani (1847), a self-See also:portraiture unabashed as the Tagebuch einer Verlorenen and See also:innocent as Paul et Virginie. An enumeration of George Sand's novels would constitute a Homeric See also:catalogue, and it must suffice to note only the most typical and characteristic. She contracted with Buloz to See also:supply him with a stated amount of copy for the modest retaining See also:fee of £16o a year, and her editor testifies that the See also:tale of script was furnished with the punctuality of a See also:notary. She wrote with the rapidity of See also:Walter See also:Scott and the regularity of See also:Anthony See also:Trollope. For years her See also:custom was to retire to her See also:desk at 10 P.m. and not to rise from it till 5 A.M. She wrote a la diable, starting with some central thesis to set forth or some problem to investigate, but with no predetermined plot or See also:plan of action. Round this See also:nucleus her characters (too often See also:mere puppets) grouped them-selves, and the story gradually crystallized. This unmethodical method produces in her longer and more ambitious novels, in Consuelo for instance and its continuation, a tangled See also:wilderness, the clue to which is lost or forgotten; but in her novelettes, when there is no change of scenery and the characters are few and simple, it results in the perfection of artistic writing, " an art that nature makes." From novels of revolt and tendency novels George Sand turned at last to simple stories of rustic life, the genuine See also:pastoral. It is here that she shows her true originality and by these she will chiefly live. George Sand by her birth and bringing-up was half a See also:peasant herself, in M. See also:Faguet's phrase, "un paysan qui savait parler." She had got to know the heart of the peasant—his superstitions, his suspiciousness and low cunning, no less than his shrewdness, his sturdy See also:independence and his strong domestic attachments. Jeanne (1844) begins the See also:series which has been happily called the See also:Bucolics of France. To paint a See also:Joan of Arc who lives and See also:dies inglorious is the theme she sets herself, and through most of the novel it is perfectly executed. The last chapters when Jeanne appears as the Velida of Mont Barbot and the Grande Pastoure are a falling off and a survival of the romanticism of her second manner. La See also:Mare an diable (1846) is a clear-cut See also:gem, perfect as a work of Greek art. See also:Francois le champi and La Petite Fadette are of no less exquisite workmanship. Les Maitres sonneurs (1853)—the favourite novel of Sir See also:Leslie See also:Stephen—brings the series of village novels to a See also:close, but as closely akin to them must be mentioned the Contes d'une grande-mbre, delightful See also:fairy tales of the Talking See also:Oak, Wings of Courage and See also:Queen Coax, told to her grandchildren in the last years of her life. The revolution of 1848 arrested for a while her novelistic activities. She threw herself heart and soul into the cause of the extreme republicans, composed manifestos for her friends, addressed letters to the people, and even started a newspaper. But her See also:political ardour was short-lived; she cared little about forms of See also:government, and, when the days of See also:June dashed to the ground her hopes of social regeneration, she quitted once for all the See also: She hits the happy mean between the studied archaism of See also:Courier's See also:Daphnis et Cloe and the realistic patois of the later kailyard novel which for Southerners requires a glossary. Of her style generally the characteristic quality is fluidity. She has all the abandon of an Italian See also:improvisatore, the simplicity of a Bernardin de St Pierre without his mawkishness, the sentimentality of a Rousseau without his egotism, the rhythmic eloquence of a Chateaubriand without his grandiloquence.
As a painter of nature she has much in common with Words-See also:worth. She keeps her See also:eye on the See also:object, but adds, like Words-worth, the visionary gleam, and receives from nature but what she herself gives. Like See also:Wordsworth she See also:lays us on the See also:lap of earth and sheds the freshness of the early world. She, too, had found love in huts where poor men dwell, and her See also:miller, her bagpipers, her workers in See also:mosaic are as faithful renderings .in See also:prose of peasant life and sentiment as Wordsworth's See also:leech-gatherer and wagoners and gleaners are in See also:verse. Her See also:psychology is not subtle or profound, but her leading characters are clearly conceived and See also:drawn in broad, bold outlines. No one has better understood or more skilfully portrayed the artistic temperament—the musician, the actor, the poet—and no French writer before her had so divined and laid See also:bare the heart of a girl. She works from within outwards, touches first the mainspring and then sets it to play. As Mr See also: Her final word on herself rings true, " Toujours tourmentee des choses divines."
Unlike See also:Victor See also:Hugo and Balzac, she founded no school, though See also:Fromentin, See also:Theuriet, See also:Cherbuliez, See also:Fabre and See also:Bazin might be claimed as her See also:collateral descendants. In See also:Russia her influence has been greater. She directly inspired Dostoievski, and Turgenieff owes much to her. In See also:England she has found her warmest admirers. See also: But it was as a humble follower, not as a See also:rival, that she took George Sand as See also:sponsor. Both women broke with social conventions, but while George Sand (if the expression may be allowed) kicked over the traces, George Eliot was impelled all the more emphatically, because of herexceptional circumstances, to put See also:duty before inclination and to uphold the reign of law and See also:order. Both passed through phases of faith, but while even See also:Positivism did not cool George Eliot's innate religious fervour, with George Sand religion was a passing experience, no deeper than her republicanism and less lasting than her socialism, and she lived and died a See also:gentle See also:savage. Rousseau's Confessions was the favourite book of both (as it was of See also:Emerson), but George Eliot was never converted by the high See also:priest of sentimentalism into a belief in human perfectibility and a return to nature. As a thinker George Eliot is vastly superior; her knowledge is more profound and her psychological See also:analysis subtler and more scientific. But as an artist, in unity of design, in harmony of treatment, in purity and simplicity of language, so felicitous and yet so unstudied, in those qualities which make the best of George Sand's novels masterpieces of art, she is as much her inferior. Mr See also:Francis Gribble has summed up her character in" a scornful, insular way " as a light woman. A truer estimate is that of Sainte-Beuve, her intimate friend for more than See also:thirty years, but never her lover. " In the great crises of action her intellect, her heart and her temperament are at one. She is a thorough woman, but with none of the pettinesses, subterfuges, and See also:mental reservations of her See also:sex; she loves wide vistas and boundless horizons and instinctively seeks them out; she is concerned for universal happiness and takes thought for the improvement of mankind—the last infirmity and most innocent See also:mania of generous souls. Her works are in very See also:deed the echo of our times. Wherever we were wounded and stricken her heart bled in sympathy, and all our maladies and miseries evoked from her a lyric wail." George Sand died at Nohant on the 8th of June 1876. To a youth and womanhood of storm and stress had succeeded an old age of serene activity and then of See also:calm decay. Her nights were spent in writing, which seemed in her case a relaxation from the real business of the day, playing with her grandchildren, gardening, conversing with her visitors—it might be Balzac or Dumas, or Octave See also:Feuillet or Matthew Arnold—or writing long letters to Sainte-Beuve and See also:Flaubert. Additional information and CommentsThere are no comments yet for this article.
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