Women in Literary History: An Exceptionally Brief Look at the Life of George Sand

George Sand: Influencer of Women. Mother. Novelist. Feminist. Inspirer

This brief profile is meant to tickle your curiosity more than give you an exhaustive story of the life of one of the most fascinating women of 19th Century France: George Sand.  I look forward to more study myself. I have concluded with five quotes from her writings, primarily because I always feel I come to know an author most fully from getting to know her writing voice.

Join me, now, in deep curiosity to an influential writing woman who you may not know much at all until right now.

She was born Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin in Paris in 1804. She became George Sand, a 19^th century icon in women’s literature who sparked the imagination of 19^th Century American women, including Emily Dickinson and Margaret Fuller, the latter idolized Sand’s lifestyle and ideals. Her influence continues in the United States today via, among other scholarship, The George Sand Society which has officers from both UC Santa Barbara and University of Massachusetts, Boston.

Sand’s self confidence would have been threatening had she not been so successful in her work. She often dressed as a man and her eccentricities unfortunately sometimes overshadow her literary contributions to the world. She penned more than seventy novels though some only think about her life in relationship to her love affairs, especially her liason with composer Frederic Chopin.

Her friend Honore Balzac, a respected French Novelist from the realist school among whose ninety one novels include amongst them strong psychological studies,  describes George Sand in this way:

“She is a female bachelor. She is an artist. She is generous. She is devoted. She is chaste. Her dominant characteristics are those of a man, and therefore, she is not to be regarded as a woman. She is an excellent mother, adored by her children. Morally, she is like a lad of twenty; for in her heart of hearts, she is more than chaste–she is a prude. It is only in externals that she comports herself as a Bohemian. All her follies are titles to glory in the eyes of those whose souls are noble.”

"We cannot tear out a single page of our life, but we can throw the whole book in the fire. "

“Guard well within yourself that treasure, kindness. Know how to give without hesitation, how to lose without regret, how to acquire without meanness.”

“The prayers of a lover are more imperious than the menaces of the whole world. “

“The beauty that addresses itself to the eyes is only the spell of the moment; the eye of the body is not always that of the soul.”

“Try to keep your soul young and quivering right up to old age.”

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© 2012 by Julie Jordan Scott