Si ma Chère kia, Georges SAND se plaisait à se déguiser
en homme et à fumer le cigare... et assistait aux réunions
masculines..
Voici quelques articles sur
Georges SAND :
George Sand : "...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."
-George Sand in a letter to Frederic Girerd, 1837 (Winegarten, 161)
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.
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.
Casimir Dudevant in the 1860s :
Sand's father, Maurice Dupin, was the grandson of the Marshall General of France, Maurice, Comte de Saxe, as well as a distant relative of Louis XVI. Her mother, Sophie-Victoire Delaborde was a commoner. Sand was born in Paris but raised for much of her childhood by her grandmother, Marie Aurore de Saxe, Madame Dupin de Franceuil, at her grandmother's estate, Nohant, in the French region of Berry (See House of George Sand). She later used the setting in many of her novels. In 1822, at age 18, she married Baron Casimir Dudevant (1795–1871), illegitimate son of Jean-François. She and Dudevant had two children: Maurice (1823–1889) and Solange (1828–1899). In early 1831 she left her prosaic husband and entered upon a four- or five-year period of "romantic rebellion." In 1835 she was legally separated from Dudevant.
Sand's reputation came into question when she began sporting men's clothing in public — which she justified by the clothes being far sturdier and less expensive than the typical dress of a noblewoman at the time. In addition to being comfortable, Sand's male dress enabled her to circulate more freely in Paris than most of her female contemporaries could, and gave her increased access to venues from which women were often barred — even women of her social standing.
Also scandalous was Sand's smoking tobacco in public; neither peerage nor gentry had yet sanctioned the free indulgence of women in such a habit, especially in public (though Franz Liszt's paramour Marie D'Agoult affected this as well, smoking large cigars). These and other behaviors were exceptional for a woman of the early and mid-19th century, when social codes—especially in the upper classes—were of the utmost importance.
As a consequence of many unorthodox aspects of her lifestyle, Sand was obliged to relinquish some of the privileges appertaining to a baroness — though, interestingly, the mores of the period did permit upper-class wives to live physically separated from their husbands, without losing face, provided the estranged couple exhibited no blatant irregularity to the outside world.
Poet Charles Baudelaire was a contemporary critic of George Sand: "She is stupid, heavy and garrulous. Her ideas on morals have the same depth of judgment and delicacy of feeling as those of janitresses and kept women.... The fact that there are men who could become enamoured of this slut is indeed a proof of the abasement of the men of this generation."
Relationships :
Stylized rendition of Delacroix's 1838 joint portrait of Sand and Chopin
She was linked romantically with Jules Sandeau (1831), Alfred de Musset (summer 1833 – March 1834) and Frédéric Chopin (1837 – 1847). Later in life, she corresponded with Gustave Flaubert; despite their obvious differences in temperament and aesthetic preference, they eventually became close friends.
She was engaged in an intimate friendship with actress Marie Dorval, which led to widespread but unconfirmed rumors of a lesbian affair.[2]
In Majorca one can still visit the (then abandoned) Carthusian monastery of Valldemossa, where she spent the winter of 1838–39 with Chopin and her children.[3] This trip to Majorca was described by her in Un Hiver à Majorque (A Winter in Majorca), published in 1855.
Chopin left her two years before his death, because of a family disturbance wherein he supported her daughter Solange's marriage choice, which had caused Sand to disown the daughter.
Writing career :
A liaison with the writer Jules Sandeau heralded her literary debut. They published a few stories in collaboration, signing them "Jules Sand." She consequently adopted, for her first independent novel, Indiana (1832) , the pen name that made her famous – George Sand.[4]
Her first published novel, Rose et Blanche (1831), was written in collaboration with Jules Sandeau.
Drawing from her childhood experiences of the countryside, she wrote the rural novels La Mare au Diable (1846), François le Champi (1847–1848), La Petite Fadette (1849), and Les Beaux Messieurs Bois-Doré (1857). A Winter in Majorca described the period that she and Chopin spent on that island in 1838-9.
Her other novels include Indiana (1832), Lélia (1833), Mauprat (1837), Le Compagnon du Tour de France (1840), Consuelo (1842–1843), and Le Meunier d'Angibault (1845).
Further theatre pieces and autobiographical pieces include Histoire de ma vie (1855), Elle et Lui (1859) (about her affair with Musset), Journal Intime (posthumously published in 1926), and Correspondence. Sand often performed her theatrical works in her small private theatre at the Nohant estate.
In addition, Sand authored literary criticism and political texts. Her most widely used quote being, "There is only one happiness in life, to love and be loved."
She was known well in far reaches of the world, and her social practices, her writings and her beliefs prompted much commentary, often by other luminaries in the world of arts and letters. A few excerpts demonstrate much of what was often said about George Sand:
"She was a thinking bosom and one who overpowered her young lovers, all Sybil — a Romantic."
V.S. Pritchett (writer)
"What a brave man she was, and what a good woman."
Ivan Turgenev (novelist)
"The most womanly woman."
Alfred de Musset (poet)
Death :
Sand in 1875
George Sand died at Nohant, near Châteauroux, in France's Indre département on June 8, 1876, at the age of 72 and was buried in the grounds of her home there. In 2004, controversial plans were suggested to move her remains to the Panthéon in Paris.
Novels :
• Rose Et Blanche (1831, with Jules Sandeau)
• Indiana (1832)
• Valentine (1832)
• Lélia (1833)
• Andréa (1833)
• Mattéa (1833)
• Jacques (1833)
• Kourroglou / Épopée Persane (1833)
• Leone Leoni (1833)
• Simon (1835)
• Mauprat (1837)
• les Maîtres Mosaïtes (1837)
• l'Oreo (1838)
• l'Uscoque (1838)
• Un Hiver À Majorque (1839)
• Pauline (1839)
• Horace (1840)
• Consuelo (1842)
• la Comtesse De Rudolstady (1843, a sequel to Consuelo)
• Jeanne (1844)
• Teverino (1845)
• Pêche de M Antoine (1845)
• Le Meunier D'Angibault (1845)
• La Petite Fadette (1846)
• La Mare Au Diable (1846)
• Lucrezia Floriani (1846)
• François Le Champi (1847)
• Les Maîtres Sonneurs (1853)
• La Daniella (1857)
• Elle Et Lui (1859)
• Jean De La Roche (1859)
• L'Homme De Neige (1859)
• La ville Noire (1860)
• Marquis De Villemer (1860)
• Mademoiselle La Quintinie (1863)
• Laura, Voyage Dans Le Cristal (1864)
• Le Dernier Amour (1866, dedicated to Flaubert)
Plays :
• Gabriel (1839)
• François Le Champi (1849)
• Claudie (1851)
• Le Mariage De Victorine (1851)
• Le Pressoir (1853, Play)
• French Adaptation of As You Like It (1856)
• Le Marquis De Villemer (1864)
• L'Autre (1870, with Sarah Bernhardt)
In literature :
Frequent literary references to George Sand can be found in Possession (1990) by A. S. Byatt. The American poet Walt Whitman cited Sand's novel Consuelo as a personal favorite and the sequel to this novel La Comtesse De Rudolstady contains at least a couple of passages that appear to have had a very direct influence on him. Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861), the English poet, produced two poems "To George Sand: A Desire" and "To George Sand: A Recognition". The character, Stepan Verkhovensky, in Dostoevsky's novel The Possessed took to translating the works of George Sand in his periodical, before the periodical was subsequently seized by the ever-cautious Russian government of the 1840s. George Sand is referenced a number of times in the play Voyage, the first part of Tom Stoppard's The Coast of Utopia trilogy. And, in the first episode of the "Overture" to Swann's Way - the first novel in Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time sequence - a young, distraught Marcel is calmed by his mother as she reads from François le Champi, a novel which it is explained was part of a birthday package from his grandmother which also included La Mare au Diable, La Petite Fadette, and Les Maîtres Sonneurs. As with many episodes involving art in À la recherche du temps perdu, this reminiscence includes commentary on the work.
In music, film, TV :
• A Song to Remember (1945), directed by Charles Vidor, starring Cornel Wilde as Chopin and Merle Oberon as George Sand.
• Notorious Woman (1974), a 7-part BBC miniseries starring Rosemary Harris as George Sand and George Chakiris as Chopin.
• In 1976, the band Ambrosia recorded the song "Danse With Me, George (Chopin's Plea)", based on Sand and Chopin's romance. It appeared on Ambrosia's Album "Somewhere I've Never Travelled."
• Impromptu (1991), starring Judy Davis as George Sand and Hugh Grant as Chopin.
• Les Enfants du siècle (1999), starring Juliette Binoche as George Sand and Benoît Magimel as Alfred de Musset
• Chopin (2002), directed by Jerzy Antczak starring Danuta Stenka as George Sand and Piotr Adamczyk as Chopin.
• In 2007, Céline Dion recorded a song based on a love letter sent from George Sand to Alfred de Musset for her album D'Elles.
• The band Meg & Dia have a song based on Sand's novel Indiana.
See also :
• Gustave Flaubert, with whom Sand conducted an intimate correspondence.
• Musée de la Vie Romantique
• Feminist literature
• Saint-Benoît-du-Sault
• House of George Sand