George Sand Biography

Dromo's Den

SAND, George (1804–76). The name assumed by Armantine Lucile Aurore, Baroness Dudevant, a French novelist. She was born in Paris, July 5, 1804. Her father, Maurice Dupin, an officer, was the grandson of Marshal Saxe, the illegitimate son of Augustus II, King of Poland. She inherited a dashing temperament, democratic sympathies, and a taste for adventure; but all this was modified first by the training of her aristocratic grandmother, with whom she remained till 13 at the ancestral homestead in Berry, then by three years at a Parisian convent (called le couvent des Anglaises), where she developed a strain of mystic idealism. On her grandmother's death she returned to Berry (1820) and after two years was persuaded to marry Casimir Dudevant (1822), a country squire. With him she lived eight years. They had two children, to whom she was devoted. From 1829 she lived mainly in Paris on a slender allowance, eked out by decorative painting; in 1831 a partial separation was arranged, and this in 1836 was made final. Her first volume, Indiana, was written in 1832. With Jules Sandeau she wrote Rose et Blanche, signed "Jules Sand," whence she took her own pseudonym. Her work falls into four periods. The first, counting as typical Valentine (1832), Lélia (1833), Jacques (1834), André (1835), Leone Leoni (1835), closes with Mauprat (1837). Here the effort is to project her own marital experiences and so assert an intense individualism. But all reflect the grief and pride of a neglected wife. The novels after 1834 reflect also the first bitter disillusionment that came from her putting in practice the theory that passion should be the rule of life. She had formed a very close attachment with the poet Alfred de Musset; she journeyed with him to Italy (1833-34) and became estranged from him under circumstances much written of and lately rendered much clearer by new documents referring to Dr. Pagello, the third person in the tragedy. Her own version of the situation is to be found, with some novelistic embellishment, in Préface a Lélia (1833), Lettres d'un voyageur (1834), and much later, with a note of resentment, in Elle et lui (1859). Musset's brother Paul endeavored to represent his in Lui et elle (1859). The book of Charles Maurras (see Bibliography) has made use of a great deal of new material and summarized with great skill this famous passion, the echo of which has been so deep in literature (especially on Musset's side). One can say that today the discussion between "Mussetistes" and "Sandistes" can bring no new developments.

Returning to Paris, she made new friends, among them Chopin, Balzac, Liszt, the painter Delacroix, the philosophic priest Lamennais, and, after three years of arrested development during which she wrote La dernière Aldini (1838), Les maîtres Mosaïstes (1838), Le compagnon du tour de France (1840), and Spiridion (1840), she dazzled the world for eight years with brilliant pleas for the Socialistic revolution (1848). This is her second manner, typical of which are Consuelo (1843), its sequel, La comtesse de Rudolstadt (1844), Le meunier d'Angibault (1845), and Le péché de M. Antoine (1847). But the object lessons of the Revolution cooled her enthusiasm, and after Napoleon's accession she lived quietly at Berry. Here she developed a third manner, idyllic naturalism, forerunners of which had been Jeanne (1844) and La mare au diable (1846). Her more noteworthy novels of this type are François le Champi (1849), La petite Fadette (1849), and Les maîtres sonneurs (1853). The wider social studies of her fourth manner began in 1860, after some dramatic experiments, with the psychologic study Jean de la Roche, and this style counts as its best novels Le marquis de Villemer (1861) and Mlle. la Quintinie (1863). Through her work there quivers a passionate rebellion against convention, moral or social. Her nature was simple, affectionate, and without vanity.

The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. XX (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 447.