6 Fran~oise Ghillebaert Introduction 7
However, Rose et Blanche remains together with Consuela because both no Sand's aristocratic ancestors led a libertine life from which her grand vels present female artists~ This new organization underscores the progres mother set apart. She was a noble soul herself who "traversa ce monde de sion in Sand's character portrayal from woman-slave to liberated female art seductions et cette foule d'hommages sans songer a autre chose qu'a cultiver ist. Incidentally, this new organization will demonstrate continuity in the les arts et a former son esprit," Sand writes (OA 1: 36). As the natural daugh Sandian heroines' identity development. Finally, an examination of the rela ter of Maurice de Saxe and Marie Rinteau--called de Verrieres, Marie tionship of the heroines to God, as a result of their identity search will be Aurore de Saxe was an aristocrat with royal ancestry, but she was afflicted completed with a case-by-case analysis. In the course of deriving the he with illegitimate births and misalliances in her lineage. She repeatedly roines' religious beliefs from the texts, this book will offer another insight to pleaded to Louis XV to be acknowledged as the natural daughter of Maurice the debate over Sand's religious opinions raised by previous scholars. de Saxe and finally was granted permission in 1766 to bear her father's The impulses underlying the disguised Sandian protagonists dictated the name. She then married the Count de Hom who soon died in a dual. Mter the organization of this book. Therefore, it was necessary to classify the motif of death of her first husband, without family protection, she decided to enter a the disguise into three categories exemplified by the types of heroines who convent. Later, she married a wealthy longtime family friend, Louis-Claude wear them: emotional for Indiana and Lelia, dramatic for Gabriel, and artistic Dupin de Francueil. Through her husband's fortune and reputation, she was for Rose and Consuelo. Every category reflects the type of disguise chosen finally accepted in the higher society and had such friends as Buffon and and the circumstances in which it occurs. Rousseau. As opposing backgrounds characterize George Sand's ancestry, As an introductory note to the novels selected, each chapter will recount the critic cannot help but wonder if she did not have an unconscious desire to basic aspects of their genesis. More information pertaining to the creation of reconcile conflicting origins that would have led her to create recurrent fe the novels will be given in the Notes section. 22 It is not the purpose of this male protagonists struggling with dual identities. book to explain the theme of the disguise or certain events in the selected Marie-Aurore de Saxe hired a private tutor, ['abbe Deschartres25 for her novels by relating them to George Sand's personal experience with cross only son Maurice Dupin, who, unlike his mother, repeated the behavior of dressing. 23 Such an approach would limit the scope of the present research, his ancestors. Maurice took up arms in Napoleon's army and became ena even though similarities do exist between Sand's life and events in her no mored with a garrison girl, the daughter of a bird seller. Despite his mother's vels. For example, the letters that Sand wrote to her lover, Aurelien de Seze, protest, Maurice married the woman whom he loved, in order to legitimize and her husband, Casimir Dudevant, during her stay in the Pyrenees give the child to be born, Aurore, later to be known as George Sand. Upon the evidence that the author drew upon her life experience to write Indiana. 24 death of her son four years later, Sand's grandmother made arrangements Other scholars have examined that question and have made a thorough anal with her daughter-in-law to be the legal guardian of her granddaughter. In ysis on the topic. Instead, the result of the present analysis will help bring out doing so, she endowed the young Aurore with the benefit of a better educa Sand's originality in the treatment of the theme of disguise and confirm that tion and milieu. From that point on, young Aurore was raised at Nohant in as a great artist, she developed her own styIe distinct from that of her group the Berry region with peasant playmates. Like her father, she also had De of friends and mentors. schartres as a tutor. Like her grandmother, she entered a convent in Paris for two years to refine her formal education. Aware of her declining health, Au Sand's Ancestry rore's grandmother earnestly wanted her granddaughter to marry soon so she George Sand was born Amantine-Aurore-Lucile Dupin on July 1, 1804, and would be guaranteed a protector in life; to her grandmother's dismay, Aurore raised by her aristocratic grandmother, Marie-Aurore de Saxe. From the repeatedly refused all the suitors presented to her. She was only seventeen spear side of the family, Sand is the great-granddaughter of the Count Mau when her grandmother died on Christmas Day in 1821, resulting in her rice de Saxe, Marshal of France, illegitimate son of Frederick August I, Elec mother's becoming her legal guardian again. Then, in 1822, Aurore met Ca tor of Saxony and King of Poland, and Maria Aurora of Koenigsmarck, an simir Dudevant through her father's friends, the Roettiers du Plessis and aristocrat of German and Swedish descent. Od the distaff side lie Sand's married him in September of that same year. popular roots. As a result of these diametrically opposed ancestries, Sand The pre-1848 lifestyle of George Sand was a most intriguing one. Her often said that she was the daughter of a patrician and a bohemian. ambivalent upbringing molded her into a person who had urbane manners 8 Franr;oise Ghillebaert Introduction 9 and a good education-she read Moliere, Shakespeare, Voltaire, and Rous gonists, who are mostly women, often appear to be submissive victims of seau, among other authors26-but dressed much like a peasant. She ran in the men, their secret world is far from submissive or conventional. Indiana, for countryside in breeches and wooden clogs with her Berrichon27 friends and example, acknowledges her slavelike condition in marriage, yet she defies rode horses. She was both feminine in appearance and at heart. At the same her husband to maintain control over her thoughts. 29 time, though, she had an independent mind that was considered to be mascu In George Sand's novels, there is indeed an underlying richness created line for her time, causing her to prefer the free life of an artist to that of a by a network of disguises and identity substitution that exemplifies the effer spouse. Her husband was a good man, yet he failed to understand her yearn vescence of her protagonists' minds and souls. Disguised heroines swirl ing for poetry. The marriage fell apart when Aurore discovered her hus around men, protected by their guise, to prove to themselves and to others band's will in which he gathered all his grief against his wife's character and their true Self. A closer look at those scenes reveals that disguises function as infidelities. Outraged, Aurore made the decision to separate from her hus what photographers would call a developer. The fact of the matter is that the band. Casimir eventually agreed to let Aurore live half of the year in Paris Sandian heroines don sororal disguises or sartorial outfits to act out their amongst her artist friends with an allowance. intention of unveiling what their lovers, and men in general, think of and While in Paris, Sand still resorted to masculine guises in order to go un want from women. For example, as Indiana confuses her lover, Raymon de noticed at the theater among her male friends and wore boots to help main Ramiere, by assuming the appearance of her sa?ur de lait30 and servant Noun, tain her balance in the muddy streets of Paris (OA 2: 117-18). She often be she obtains the proof that they are lovers. In a similar scene of sororal confu came involved in games of hide-and-seek behind female and male personae sion, Lelia witnesses Stenio's love scene with her sister. Next, Gabriel, the in social gatherings. She mentions in her autobiography various occasions epitome of the Sandian cross-dressing heroine, bonds with her male cousin where confusion occurred over her gender identity. Two such cases were and discovers his greed for their grandfather's inheritance, thus denying the when M. Rollinat failed to realize that he had talked to a girl dressed as a rights of primogeniture to first-born women. Similarly, Rose, dressed as a boy,28 and again when the restaurant owner pere Pinson had a difficult time man, learns that her lover has a low opinion of female artists. Finally, Con adjusting to Sand's shifting identities: "11 ne s'etait pas plutot accoutume a suelo faces discrimination against female artists when she realizes that men dire monsieur que je reparaissais en femme, et il n'arrivait a dire madame admire her for her beautiful voice while she portrays a young soprano boy, que Ie jour ou je redevenais monsieur" (OA 2: 119). What was true of her life but refuse to believe that she is in fact, a young girl. also rang true in her novels, but the game was not just a matter of disguising The theme of the disguise and its affinities with double identities is not herself as a man to gain cheap entree to theater seats. It was, in fact, much unique to George Sand's novels. It is used extensively from god-celebrating more than a game since it was part of a scheme to liberate herself and other rituals, Greek tragedies, folk tales, plays, la commedia dell'arte, and novels. women from the restriction of nineteenth-century patriarchal conventions Modern tales compiled in Anne Richter's Histoires de doubles d'Hoffmann a and attitudes. In order to understand this aspect of her life, Sand's career and Cortazar evidences the continuous interest for the theme of the double over her fiction need to be put into a historical perspective. the past two centuries. Traditionally, playwrights have exploited the versatili ty of the disguise to create confusion and give rise to laughter, as for exam The Woman-Author ple, Plautus's Menaechmi, Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice and As Sand's early literary period denotes a strong Romanticism in which Sandian You Like It, Moliere's comedies, in particular Amphitryon, and Marivaux's heroines suffer from Ie mal du siecle, as Isabelle Naginski points out in Le jeu de l'amour et du hasard. So did Romantic authors like Henri de La "George Sand: Gynographie et androgynie" (33). Chateaubriand, whom touche in Fragoletta, Theophile Gautier in Mademoiselle de Maupin, and Sand met in 1835, compared Sand to Lord Byron, while Musset equated her Balzac in Seraphfta and Sarrasine. Each exploited the ambiguity and versa tility of gender identity suggested by identity substitution and cross to Chateaubriand. As true Romantics, Sandian heroines struggle through in 31 tricate Romantic situations while confronting the patriarchal nineteenth dressing. In Sand's case, however, the disguise, sororal or sartorial, is de century society of the time. Indeed, the intrigue in George Sand's novels is void of the sexual connotation that her contemporaries attributed to it. It is usually set in a background of male-dominated bourgeois attitudes that of used instead to reinforce the heroines' existing feminine identities, and it is fered women little room for any out-of-the-ordinary life. Yet, if her prota- linked to the birth of a new type of independent and self-assertive female