- Women Writers
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- Sand vs. Tristan
- --Rebels I
- --Rebels II
- --George Sand
- --Flora Tristan
- --Beaumont
Works Consulted
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George Sand
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- "...people think it very
natural and pardonable to trifle with what is most sacred when
dealing with women: women do not count in the social or moral
order. I solemnly vow--and this is the first glimmer of courage
and ambition in my life!--that I shall raise woman from her abject
position, both through my self and my writing, God will help
me!...let female slavery also have its Spartacus. That shall
I be, or perish in the attempt."
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- -George Sand in a letter to Frederic Girerd, 1837 (Winegarten, 161)
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- The romantic 19th century French
novelist, George Sand, was born Aurore Dupin in 1804. In 1821,
after both Aurore's father and grandmother had died, she married
Casimir Dudevant to escape her mother's guardianship. Aurore
soon found married life too constraining for her and so moved
out. (At the time divorce was illegal and so she was only separated
from her husband.) On her own, she soon realized that the monthly
allowance she received from her husband was not enough to lead
the life she once did and so she began to publish her writings
to gain money. Her first few novels were co-written with her
lover Jules Sandeau but in 1832 she wrote her first solo novel,
Indiana, under the pseudonym George Sand.
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- George Sand: The Woman
- Aurore not only had a man's
name now but she also dressed as a man. Being an adventuring
enthusiast, she yearned to enter the intellectual scenes where
women were forbidden: restricted libraries, museums and the pit
of the theatre (where the seats were cheaper but still a socially
unacceptable place for a lady.) For access she donned men's trousers,
a hat and smoked cigars. At first, waiters and bellhops would
look on in confusion. They did not know whether to call her madam
or sir and she soon found that the title changed dependent on
what she was wearing at the time. Though many assumed George
was trying to become a man, in truth she was fighting the stereotype
of the proper bourgeois lady. She stood up against the double
standards of marriage and claimed that women had the same right
to freedom as their husbands. In a letter to Francois Rollinat
she wrote: "Chastity would have been glorious on the part
of free women. For women slaves it is tyranny which wounds them
and whose yoke they badly shake off." (Cate,
391)
- George Sand: The Writer
- Although George Sand was not
the first women author, she is often attributed as the first
professional woman writer of fiction. By taking on a man's name
she claimed her equality with the male writers of the time. She
wanted to be judged purely based upon her talents and not only
as a women author, which the men looked upon condescendingly.
She soon became famous and other women began to copy her style.
They too took on male names but most of these women lacked the
education that the male authors had. While the men had been taught
editing, revising and polishing before releasing their work to
the public, the women lacked this education and so would often
publish their first drafted idea. As for George Sand's own writing,
her words were read by hundreds of men and women alike. Her novels
often portrayed women as
 intelligent
and morally sound individuals, giving her readers confidence
in their worth as females. She was an idol to women of her time.
While giving dignity to those she considered enslaved to marriage,
she forever changed the way that women writers were viewed.
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