GE (I) i-ir GE SAND STUDIES Publication made possible by a grant from Empire State College of the State University of New York ISSN 0161-6544 Vol. 19, Nos. 1 and 2 2000 EDITORS-IN-CHIEF Fn./Noise Massardier-Kenney (Kent State U.) Isabelle Naginski (Tufts U.) EDITORIAL BOARD Thelma Jurgrau (Emerita Empire State C. SUNY), Anne E. McCall (Tulane U.), David Powell (Hofstra U.), Annabelle M. Rea (Occidental C.), Nancy Rogers (National Endowment for the Humanities) BOOK REVIEW EDITOR David Powell GUEST EDITOR Thelma Jurgrau GEORGE SAND ASSOCIATION (Founded as The Friends of George Sand, at Hofstra University 1976) FOUNDING EDITOR Natalie Datlof FOUNDING MEMBERS. Joseph G. Astman (Hofstra U.), Paul G. Blount (Georgia State U.), Marie M. Collins (Rutgers U.), Natalie Datlof (Hofstra U.), Edwin L. Dunbaugh (Hofstra U.), Lesley S. Hermann (Manhattan C.), Thelma Jurgrau (Empire State C. SUNY), Frank S. Lambasa (Hofstra U.), Dennis O'Brien (West Virginia U.), Marie-Jeanne Pecile (Maison-Lafitte, France), William Shiver (Hofstra U.), Enid Standring (Montclair State U.), Germaine Stilson (SPFA), Alex Szogyi (Hunter C. CUNY). HONORARY MEMBERS. Germaine Bree, Francoise Gilot, Germaine Greer, Marie-Jacques Hoog, Georges Lubin, Alvin Lundquist, Christiane Sand. GEORGE SAND STUDIES Vol. 19, Nos. 1 and 2 • 2000 CONTENTS Guest Editor's Column 1 Hommage a Georges Lubin 4 Articles Annik Doquire Kerzberg. "L'Enfant au centre de La Mare au Diable." 10 Mary Anne Garnett. "Missing Links: Configurations of the Ideal Family in George Sand's Autobiographical Writings." 29 Domnica Radulescu. "La Fillette, le farfelu, et le fantastique dans La Petite Fadette." 38 Mary Rice-Defosse. "Jocasta Vanishes: Maternal Absence and Narrative Desire in Le Peche de Monsieur Antoine." 52 Deborah Houk Schocket. "Domination and the Ends of Seduction: Comparing Sand's Leone Leoni and Balzac's Un Prince de la Boheme." 62 Dominique Laporte. "George Sand et le roman: Une Poetique de l'ecriture engagee." 75 Anita Alkhas. "Trenmor: Tracing Sand's Path to Utopianism." 87 Bruno Viard: "Presence de Leroux dans Histoire de ma vie de Sand." 100 Nicole Luce. "Pierre qui route de George Sand: Un SymptOme de l'affaiblissement d'une demarche theatrale progressiste." 112 Reviews Anne E. McCall Saint-Satins. De l'etre en lettres: L'Autobiographie epistolaire de George Sand. (Isabelle Naginski) 125 Beatrice Didier. George Sand ecrivain: Un grand fleuve dAmerique. (Anne McCall) 129 Francoise Massardier-Kenney. Gender in the Fiction of George Sand. (David Powell) 132 Sand/Barbes: Correspondance d'une amitie republicaine, 1848-1870. Ed. Michelle Perrot. (Michele Hecquet) 134 Michele Hecquet, ed. L'Education des filles au temps de George Sand. (Eric Paquin) 136 Janet Hiddleston. George Sand and Autobiography. (Sue White) 139 Belinda Jack. George Sand: A Woman's Lift Writ Large. (Elizabeth Harlan) 143 Pierre Gilles/Huguette Bouchardeau. La Lune et les sabots. (Georges Lubin) 150 "Vu mais pas (encore) lu": Recent publications 151 Bibliography for 2000 153 Authors and Tides of Articles from the Contents of Previous Issues of GSS 156 – 1 – Guest Editor's Column n preparing the list of Contents of Previous Issues of George Sand Studies con- tained in the last pages of this issue, I was struck by the contrast between then 1and now Our earliest contributors sent memoirs of their trips to Nohant, Palaisseau, Mallorca, Sand's Parisian haunts, as though they wished to realize for themselves the places she inhabited. Similarly, they wrote articles reconnecting Sand to her contemporaries in France and America — Flaubert, Rousseau, De Tocqueville, Henry James — in order to strengthen Sand's literary pedigree, but sometimes to highlight Sand's political connection to women writers rarely includ- ed in the canon — Marie D'Agoult, Flora Tristan, Margaret Fuller, Edith Wharton. It would seem that some reacquaintance with the woman was necessary before we could focus on the work, much of which was out of print in any case. That is not to say that serious criticism and scholarship were lacking. Signs of the former were apparent as we examined Sand's uses of mythology, her struggle to write, her search for a poetics. But the tools of our scholarship — George Lubin's edition of her Oeuvres autobiographiques and his ongoing work on the Correspondance — had to precede our criticism. A chronology of Sand's life by Lubin is featured in five issues of the Friends of George Sand Newsletter (1979-80), precursor to George Sand Studies. Other Sandistes were producing translations in order to make her work accessible in English. The idea was to expose students to the oeuvre in whatever way we could. Including Sand's work in the academic cur- riculum could mean eventual canonization. Early issues of our publication allude to a mere dozen novels, whereas since 1984 Sandistes have given close textual attention to more than forty, not to men- tion plays, letters, and autobiography. While the fascination for Sand as a person is still in evidence, it is more recently manifest through her ideas, such as her views on history, or as a critic of art, literature, or translation. And when we examine the life today, we direct our attention to her self-portraiture or walk the fine line between fiction and life writing. While we still enjoy comparing her to her fellow writers, such views are now directed to novels that contrast the sexual roles the authors have created for their characters. While politics, race, class, genre, myth, narration, landscape description have all been focal points for articles, by far the main slant in recent times has been toward gender studies. -2— One might say that, then, we were intent on scrutinizing her infamous reputa- tion, not to condemn as Victorians had, but to celebrate her behavior as liberating. Now, we are revising the negative views Sand's contemporaries held of her work and liberating ourselves as critics by exposing her subversive positions on sexuality, or by making esthetic sense of the so-called flaws and fissures in her texts, to take a different measure of her value as a writer. But have we succeeded in making her work part of the canon? That would seem too great a claim, although a small sam- pling of Sandistes agree that we have done better here than our counterparts in France. The consensus is that many professors are assigning Sand's novels in American universities. (If inclusion in an anthology is a criterion of canonization, one can find the whole of La Mare au Diable in Berg and Leroy, Litt6rature francaise : textes et contextes, Vol. II.) Nineteen novels in particular were cited, in addition to the autobiography and the Sand/Flaubert correspondence, Indiana most often. If you glance over the list of Contents of Previous Issues, you will see confirmed the popularity of Sand's first novel. Particularly pleasing to me is the sustained interest, from then until now, in Sand's Berrichon novels and in her autobiography. In the present issue, Annik Doquire Kerszberg directs us to the centrality of the child in La Mare au Diable via Sand's sustained use of the youthful characters as prime movers of the plot, as well as the value she bestows on them that distinguishes her from her contemporary writers in the fictional treatment of children. In "Missing Links: Configurations of the Ideal Family," Mary Anne Garnett shows us how Sand transcends the limits of gender and generation inherent in the conventional Oedipal triangle of father/mother/child, in two evocative passages from the autobiographical works. And Domnica Radulescu poses a riddle as she analyzes a rich supply of contradic- tory descriptors in "La Fillette, le farfelu, et le fantastique dans La Petite Fadette." Still within the purview of gender, Mary Rice-DeFosse, taking exception to Peter Brooks' narrative theory, gives Le Fiche de Monsieur Antoine a reading that valorizes Sand's open ended text for making a feminist statement regarding women's freedom in marriage, motherhood, and as reflected in the natural envi- ronment. And Deborah Houk Schocket compares male and female perspectives on masculine domination in Sand's Leone Leoni and in Balzac's Un Prince de la Boheme, elucidating each novelist's esthetic position as well as how her and his nar- rative of seduction supports or subverts the ideology of patriarchy. Pursuing a more recent trend of interest in Sand's idealism, Dominique Laporte, in "George Sand et le roman: une poetique de l'ecriture engagee," shows -3— how Sand breaks down barriers of genre to achieve an ambivalent construct some- where between essay and novel. And Anita Alkhas, in "Trenmor: Tracing Sand's Path to Utopianism," examines the versions of that novella as the source of Sand's development as a committed Utopian. In the last issue of George Sand Studies, Bruno Viard presented Pierre Leroux's position vis a vis the role of art and artists in general. Viard's present article focus- es on Sand's homage to the philosopher in Histoire de ma vie and on particular affinities in Sand and Leroux's thought. To the growing interest in Sand's dramat- ic work I am pleased to include an article by Nicole Luce that illuminates a seem- ing regression of the novelist in her advanced ideas of theatrical practice, as expressed in Pierre qui roule. The Editoral Board plans to devote a future issue to Georges Lubin, who died on February 13, 2000. Nevertheless, we wish to mark the passing of this great scholar by reprinting, in the present issue, two brief hommages, from La lettre d'Ars, published in March 2000. The members of the Editorial Board and the Editors-in-Chief have been helpful to me in all aspects of editing this issue.