The Marquise and Pauline: Two Novellas

by George Sand, Sue Huseman (Translator), Charron Sylvie (Translator)

Overview

In The Marquise, George Sand reacts against the tradition of the libertine novels of the 19th century by making the Marquise the narrator of the story, thus giving her control of the action. Sand deconstructs the myth of the seducer by making Lelio, the hero, the subject of the Marquise's desire. Pauline's two female protagonists represent diametrically opposed 19th-century female roles. Pauline is trapped by the bourgeois strictures of the time, while her friend, Laurence, an actress and intellectual, is independent both financially and emotionally.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780897334495
Publisher:	Chicago Review Press, Incorporated
Publication date:	08/30/2005
Pages:	200
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

George Sand is the pen name of Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin, Baroness Dudevant, a 19th century French novelist and memoirist. Sand is best known for her novels Indiana, Lélia, and Consuelo, and for her memoir A Winter in Majorca, in which she reflects on her time on the island with Chopin in 1838-39. A champion of the poor and working classes, Sand was an early socialist who published her own newspaper using a workers' co-operative and scorned gender conventions by wearing men's clothing and smoking tobacco in public. George Sand died in France in 1876.

Editorial Reviews

Two novellas by the celebrated 19th-century French novelist, translated into English for the first time. The novel of manners has come far since the18th century-so far, actually, that by today it has pretty well wandered off the horizon. A growing number of feminists and cultural historians, however, are reexamining the romances and "penny dreadfuls"of earlier periods for insights into the conditions of life for women during these eras, and it will be largely among such readers that these novellas (hardly Sand's best) will find their audience. The Marquise offers an elderly French aristocrat's recollections of the one grand passion of her life: an infatuation she developed for Lelio, an Italian actor at the Comédie Francaise. Reversing the usual gender roles (the rich pursuer is a woman, the naive victim male) gives the story a twist, but not enough to make up for the stale plot and hackneyed prose (" 'Take pity on me,' he said, 'kill me, drive me away' ").On the other hand, Pauline is a more conventional woman-wronged tale. Here, an innocent country girl, emboldened by her childhood friend's success on the Parisian stage, moves to the city in search of fame and fortune-only to be toyed with by a philandering boulevardier who impregnates her while carrying on with her best friend. Although not without touches of wit ("Thus this trite tale ended in marriage, and that was Pauline's greatest misfortune"), the entire narrative resembles a crude outline of Madame Bovary written for children. For the archives only. Sand is an important enough figure to merit posthumous publication and translation, but little here will interest anyone not already very interested in her. .

Kirkus Reviews