George Sand
Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin de Francueil, best known by her pen name George Sand, was a French novelist, memoirist and journalist. Being more renowned than either Victor Hugo or Honoré de Balzac in Britain in the 1830s and 1840s, Sand is recognised as one of the most notable writers of the European Romantic era. She has more than 50 volumes of various works to her credit, including tales, plays and political texts, alongside her 70 novels.
Like her great-grandmother, Louise Dupin, whom she admired, George Sand advocated for women's rights and passion, criticized the institution of marriage, and fought against the prejudices of a conservative society. She was considered scandalous because of her turbulent love life, her adoption of masculine clothing, and her masculine pseudonym.
Personal life
Childhood
Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin, the future George Sand, was born on 1 July 1804 on rue Meslay in Paris to Maurice Dupin de Francueil and Sophie-Victoire Delaborde. She was the paternal great-granddaughter of the Marshal of France Maurice de Saxe, and on her mother's side, her grandfather was Antoine Delaborde, master paumier and master birder. For much of her childhood, she was raised by her grandmother Marie-Aurore de Saxe, Madame Dupin de Francueil, at her grandmother's house in the village of Nohant, in the French province of Berry. Sand inherited the house in 1821 when her grandmother died, and used the setting in many of her novels.Gender presentation
Sand was one of many notable 19th-century women who chose to wear male attire in public. In 1800, the police chief of Paris issued an order requiring women to apply for a “transvestite pass” in order to wear male clothing. Some women applied for health, occupational, or recreational reasons, although many women chose to wear trousers and other traditional male attire in public without receiving a permit. Sand obtained said permit in 1831, justifying it as being less expensive and far sturdier than the typical dress of a noblewoman at the time. In addition to being comfortable, Sand's male attire enabled her to circulate more freely in Paris than most of her female contemporaries and gave her increased access to venues that barred women, even those of her social standing. Also scandalous was Sand's smoking tobacco in public; neither peerage nor gentry had yet sanctioned the free indulgence by women of such a habit, especially in public, although Franz Liszt's paramour Marie d'Agoult affected this as well, smoking large cigars.While some contemporaries were critical of her comportment, many people accepted her behaviour—until they became shocked with the subversive tone of her novels. Those who found her writing admirable were not bothered by her ambiguous or rebellious public behaviour.
In 1831, at the age of 27, she chose her pseudonym George Sand. "Sand" was derived from the name of her lover and fellow writer Jules Sandeau, as the pair had previously co-authored a novel under the pseudonym J. Sand. She added George to complete the name and distinguish it from Sandeau's, removing the final "s" from the usual French spelling of the name to heighten its ambiguity as a pseudonym.
Victor Hugo commented, "George Sand cannot determine whether she is male or female. I entertain a high regard for all my colleagues, but it is not my place to decide whether she is my sister or my brother."
Gender appears to be likewise ambiguous in Sand's own perspective. Sometimes when writing first person memoirs or essays, Sand's language "speaks to modern explorations of gender ambiguity" in the consistent use of a first-person "male persona" used to describe Sand's own experiences and identity in masculine terms. However, when writing an autobiography of the author's youth, the person described is a girl/woman whose descriptions aligns with her legal designation as "la demoiselle Aurora."
Sand's friends and peers likewise alternate between using masculine or female adjectives and pronouns depending on the situation. For instance, in reviewing the collected letters of Sand's lover Chopin, one finds her consistently addressed as either "Mme Sand" or more familiarly as "George". Either way, she is referred to with feminine pronouns, and positioned as the "Lady of the House" when referring to their domestic life together. However, when speaking of Sand as a public rather than a private figure, even those who clearly knew the writer's sex also tended to apply masculine terms when speaking of their role as an author. For instance Jules Janin describes Sand as the king of novelists rather than as the queen. Likewise, Flaubert refers to Sand as being a dear master of their shared art, using a masculine title to denote the masculine professional role, but a grammatically feminine adjective that acknowledges their legal or grammatical sex.
Notable relationships
In 1822, at the age of eighteen, Sand married Casimir Dudevant, an out-of-wedlock son of Baron Jean-François Dudevant. She and Dudevant had two children: Maurice and Solange. In 1825, she had an intense but perhaps platonic affair with the young lawyer Aurélien de Sèze. In early 1831, she left her husband and entered upon a four- or five-year period of "romantic rebellion". In 1835, she was legally separated from Dudevant and took custody of their children.Sand had romantic affairs with the novelist Jules Sandeau, the Polish-Russian Prince Norbert Przanowski, the writer Prosper Mérimée, the dramatist Alfred de Musset, Louis-Chrysostome Michel, the actor Pierre-François Bocage, the writer Charles Didier, the novelist Félicien Mallefille, the politician Louis Blanc, and the composer Frédéric Chopin. Later in her life, she corresponded with Gustave Flaubert, and despite their differences in temperament and aesthetic preference, they eventually became close friends.
Sand was also close friends with the actress Marie Dorval. Whether they were physically involved or not has been debated, yet never verified. The two met in January 1833, after Sand wrote Dorval a letter of appreciation following one of her performances. Sand wrote about Dorval, including many passages where she is described as smitten with Dorval.
Only those who know how differently we were made can realize how utterly I was in thrall to her...God had given her the power to express what she felt...She was beautiful, and she was simple. She had never been taught anything, but there was nothing she did not know by instinct. I can find no words with which to describe how cold and incomplete my own nature is. I can express nothing. There must be a sort of paralysis in my brain which prevents what I feel from ever finding a form through which it can achieve communication...When she appeared upon the stage, with her drooping figure, her listless gait, her sad and penetrating glance...I can say only that it was as though I were looking at an embodied spirit.
Theater critic Gustave Planche reportedly warned Sand to stay away from Dorval. Likewise, Count Alfred de Vigny, Dorval's lover from 1831 to 1838, warned the actress to stay away from Sand, whom he referred to as "that damned lesbian". In 1840, Dorval played the lead in a play written by Sand, titled Cosima, and the two women collaborated on the script. However, the play was not well-received, and was cancelled after only seven showings. Sand and Dorval remained close friends for the remainder of Dorval's lifetime.
Chopin
Sand spent the winter of 1838–1839 with Frédéric Chopin in Mallorca at the Carthusian monastery of Valldemossa. The trip to Mallorca was described in her Un hiver à Majorque, first published in 1841. Chopin was already ill with incipient tuberculosis at the beginning of their relationship, and spending a cold and wet winter in Mallorca where they could not get proper lodgings exacerbated his symptoms.Sand and Chopin also spent many long summers at Sand's country manor in Nohant from 1839 to 1846, skipping only 1840. There, Chopin wrote many of his most famous works, including the Fantaisie in F minor, Op. 49, Piano Sonata No. 3, Op. 58, and the Ballade No. 3 Op. 47.
In her novel Lucrezia Floriani, Sand is said to have used Chopin as a model for a sickly Eastern European prince named Karol. He is cared for by a middle-aged actress past her prime, Lucrezia, who suffers greatly through her affection for Karol. Though Sand claimed not to have made a cartoon out of Chopin, the book's publication and widespread readership may have exacerbated their later antipathy towards each other. After Chopin's death, Sand burned much of their correspondence, leaving only four surviving letters between the two. Three of the letters were published in the "Classiques Garnier" series in 1968.
Another breach was caused by Chopin's attitude toward Sand's daughter, Solange. Chopin continued to be cordial to Solange after she and her husband Auguste Clésinger fell out with Sand over money. Sand took Chopin's support of Solange to be extremely disloyal, and confirmation that Chopin had always "loved" Solange.
Sand's son Maurice disliked Chopin. Maurice wanted to establish himself as the "man of the estate" and did not wish to have Chopin as a rival. Maurice removed two sentences from a letter Sand wrote to Chopin when he published it because he felt that Sand was too affectionate toward Chopin and Solange.
Chopin and Sand separated two years before his death for a variety of reasons. Chopin was never asked back to Nohant; in 1848, he returned to Paris from a tour of the United Kingdom, to die at the Place Vendôme in 1849. George Sand was notably absent from his funeral.
In December 1849, Maurice invited the engraver Alexandre Manceau to celebrate Christmas in Nohant. George Sand fell passionately in love with Manceau, he became her lover, companion and secretary and they stayed together for fifteen years until his death.