George Sand, some aspects of her life and writings Part 4

This declaration is rather surprising to any one who reads it to-day.

We might ask whether what was natural in 1832 would be natural in 1910?

That is not the question which concerns us, though. The important fact to note is that George Sand was no longer attempting to manufacture monstrosities. She was endeavouring to be true, and she wanted above everything else to present a character of woman who would be the typical modern woman.

"Noemi (this name was afterwards left to Sandeau, who had used it in _Marianna_. George Sand changed it to that of _Indiana_) is a typical woman, strong and weak, tired even by the weight of the air, but capable of holding up the sky; timid in everyday life, but daring in days of battle; shrewd and clever in seizing the loose threads of ordinary life, but silly and stupid in distinguishing her own interests when it is a question of her happiness; caring little for the world at large, but allowing herself to be duped by one man; not troubling much about her own dignity, but watching over that of the object of her choice; despising the vanities of the times as far as she is concerned, but allowing herself to be fascinated by the man who is full of these vanities. This, I believe," she says, "is the usual woman, an extraordinary mixture of weakness and energy, of grandeur and of littleness, a being ever composed of two opposite natures, at times sublime and at times despicable, clever in deceiving and easily deceived herself."

This novel, intended to present to us the modern woman, ought to be styled a "feminist novel." It was also, as regards other points of view.

_Indiana_ appeared in May, 1832, _Valentine_ in 1833, and _Jacques_ in 1834. In these three books I should like to show our present feminism, already armed, and introduced to us according to George Sand's early ideas.

_Indiana_ is the story of a woman who had made an unfortunate marriage.

At the age of nineteen she had married Colonel Delmare. Colonels were very much in vogue in those days, and the fact that he had attained that rank proves that he was much older than she was. Colonel Delmare was an honest, straightforward man in the Pharisaical sense of the word. This simply means that he had never robbed or killed any one. He had no delicacy and no charm, and, fond as he was of his own authority, he was a domestic tyrant. Indiana was very unhappy between this execrable husband and a cousin of hers, Ralph, a man who is twice over English, in the first place because his name is Brown, and then because he is phlegmatic. Ralph is delightful and most excellent, and it is on his account that she is insensible to the charms of Raymon de Ramieres an elegant and distinguished young man who is a veritable lady-killer.

s.p.a.ce forbids us to go into all the episodes of this story, but the crisis is that Colonel Delmare is ruined, and his business affairs call him to the Isle of Bourbon. He intends to take Indiana with him, but she refuses to accompany him. She knows quite well that Raymon will do all he can to prevent her going. She hurries away to him, offers herself to him, and volunteers to remain with him always. It is unnecessary to give Raymon's reply to this charming proposal. Poor Indiana receives a very wet blanket on a cold winter's night.

She therefore starts for the Isle of Bourbon, and, some time after her arrival there, she gets a letter from Raymon which makes her think that he is very unhappy. She accordingly hastens back to him, but is received by the young wife whom Raymon has just married. It is a very brilliant marriage, and Raymon could not have hoped for anything more satisfactory. Poor Indiana! The Seine, however, is quite near, and she throws herself into it. This was quite safe, as Ralph was there to fish her out again. Ralph was always at hand to fish his cousin out of everything. He is her appointed rescuer, her Newfoundland dog. In the country or in the town, on _terra firma_ or on the boat which takes Indiana to the Isle of Bourbon, we always see Ralph turn up, phlegmatic as usual. Unnecessary to say that Ralph is in love with Indiana. His apparent calmness is put on purposely. It is the snowy covering under which a volcano is burning. His awkward and unprepossessing appearance conceals an exquisite soul. Ralph brings Indiana good news. Colonel Delmare is dead, so that she is free. What will she do now with her liberty? After due deliberation, Ralph and Indiana decide to commit suicide, but they have to agree about the kind of death they will die.

Ralph considers that this is a matter of certain importance. He does not care to kill himself in Paris; there are too many people about, so that there is no tranquillity. The Isle of Bourbon seems to him a pleasant place for a suicide. There was a magnificent horizon there; then, too, there was a precipice and a waterfall. . . .

Ralph's happy ideas are somewhat sinister, but the couple set out nevertheless for the Isle of Bourbon in search of a propitious waterfall. A sea-voyage, under such circ.u.mstances, would be an excellent preparation. When once there, they carry out their plans, and Ralph gives his beloved wise advice at the last moment. She must not jump from the side, as that would be bad. "Throw yourself into the white line that the waterfall makes," he says. "You will then reach the lake with that, and the torrent will plunge you in." This sounds enticing.

Such a suicide was considered infinitely poetical at that epoch, and every one pitied Indiana in her troubles. It is curious to read such books calmly a long time afterwards, books which reflect so exactly the sentiments of a certain epoch. It is curious to note how the point of view has changed, and how people and things appear to us exactly the reverse of what they appeared to the author and to contemporaries.

As a matter of fact, the only interesting person in all this is Colonel Delmare, or, at any rate, he is the only one of whom Indiana could not complain. He loved her, and he loved no one else but her. The like cannot be said for Indiana. Few husbands would imitate his patience and forbearance, and he certainly allowed his wife the most extraordinary freedom. At one time we find, a young man in Indiana's bedroom, and at another time Indiana in a young man's bedroom. Colonel Delmare receives Raymon at his house in a friendly way, and he tolerates the presence of the sempiternal Ralph in his home. What more can be asked of a husband than to allow his wife to have a man friend and a cousin? Indiana declares that Colonel Delmare has struck her, and that the mark is left on her face. She exaggerated, though, as we know quite well what took place. In reality all this was at Plessis-Picard. Delmare-Dudevant struck Indiana-Aurore. This was certainly too much, but there was no blood shed. As to the other personages, Raymon is a wretched little rascal, who was first the lover of Indiana's maid. He next made love to poor Noun's mistress, and then deserted her to make a rich marriage.

Ralph plunges Indiana down a precipice. That was certainly bad treatment for the woman he loved. As regards Indiana, George Sand honestly believed that she had given her all the charms imaginable. As a matter of fact, she did charm the readers of that time. It is from this model that we have one of the favourite types of woman in literature for the next twenty years--the misunderstood woman.

The misunderstood woman is pale, fragile, and subject to fainting. Up to page 99 of the book, Indiana has fainted three times. I did not continue counting. This fainting was not the result of bad health. It was the fashion to faint. The days of nerves and languid airs had come back. The women whose grandmothers had walked so firmly to the scaffold, and whose mothers had listened bravely to the firing of the cannon under the Empire, were now depressed and tearful, like so many plaintive elegies.

It was just a matter of fashion. The misunderstood woman was supposed to be unhappy with her husband, but she would not have been any happier with another man. Indiana does not find fault with Colonel Delmare for being the husband that he is, but simply for being the husband!

"She did not love her husband, for the mere reason, perhaps, that she was told it was her duty to love him and that it had become her second nature, a principle and a law of her conscience to resist inwardly all moral constraint." She affected a most irritating gentleness, an exasperating submissiveness. When she put on her superior, resigned airs, it was enough to unhinge an angel. Besides, what was there to complain about, and why should she not accommodate herself to conditions of existence with which so many others fall in? She must not be compared to others, though. She is eminently a distinguished woman, and she asks without shrinking: "Do you know what it means to love a woman such as I am?"

In her long silences and her persistent melancholy, she is no doubt thinking of the love appropriate to a woman such as she is. She was a princess in exile and times were then hard for princesses. That is why the one in question took refuge in her homesick sorrow. All this is what people will not understand. Instead of rising to such sublimities, or of being lost in fogs, they judge from mere facts. And on coming across a young wife who is inclined to prefer a handsome, dark young man to a husband who is turning grey, they are apt to conclude: "Well, this is not the first time we have met with a similar case. It is hardly worth while making such a fuss about a young plague of a woman who wants to go to the bad." It would be very unjust, though, not to recognize that _Indiana_ is a most remarkable novel. There is a certain relief in the various characters, Colonel Delmare, Raymon, Ralph and Inaiana. We ought to question the husbands who married wives belonging to the race of misunderstood women brought into vogue by _Indiana_.

_Valentine_, too, is the story of a woman unhappily married.

This time the chief _role_ is given to the lover, and not to the woman.

Instead of the misunderstood woman, though, we have the typical frenzied lover, created by the romantic school. Louise-Valentine de Raimbault is about to marry Norbert-Evariste de Lansac, when suddenly this young person, who is accustomed to going about in the country round and to the village fetes, falls in love with the nephew of one of her farmers.

The young man's name is Benedict, and he is a peasant who has had some education. His mentality is probably that of a present-day elementary school-teacher. Valentine cannot resist him, although we are told that Benedict is not very handsome. It is his soul which Valentine loves in him. Benedict knows very well that he cannot marry Valentine, but he can cause her a great deal of annoyance by way of proving his love. On the night of the wedding he is in the nuptial chamber, from which the author has taken care to banish the husband for the time being. Benedict watches over the slumber of the woman he loves, and leaves her an epistle in which he declares that, after hesitating whether he should kill her husband, her, or himself, or whether he should kill all three, or only select two of the three, and after adopting in turn each of these combinations, he has decided to only kill himself. He is found in a ditch in a terrible plight, but we are by no means rid of him.

Benedict is not dead, and he has a great deal of harm to do yet. We shall meet with him again several times, always hidden behind curtains, listening to all that is said and watching all that takes place. At the right moment he comes out with his pistol in his hand. The husband is away during all this time. No one troubles about him, though. He is a bad husband, or rather he is--a husband, and Benedict has nothing to fear as far as he is concerned. But one day a peasant, who does not like the looks of Benedict, attacks him with his pitchfork and puts an end to this valuable life.

The question arises, by what right Benedict disturbs Valentine's tranquillity. The answer is by the right of his pa.s.sion for her. He has an income of about twenty pounds a year. It would be impossible for him to marry on that. What has he to offer to the woman whose peace of mind he disturbs and whose position he ruins? He offers himself. Surely that should be enough. Then, too, it is impossible to reason with individuals of his temperament. We have only to look at him, with his sickly pallor and the restless light in his eyes. We have only to listen to the sound of his voice and his excited speeches. At times he goes in for wild declamation, and immediately afterwards for cold irony and sarcasm. He is always talking of death. When he attempts to shoot himself he always misses, but when Adele d'Hervey resists him, at the time he has taken the name of Antony, he kills her. He is therefore a dangerous madman.

We now have two fresh personages for novels, the misunderstood woman and the frenzied lover. It is a pity they do not marry each other, and so rid us of them.

We must not lose sight, though, of the fact that, contestable as _Valentine_ certainly is as a novel of pa.s.sion, there is a pastoral novel of the highest order contained in this book. The setting of the story is delightful. George Sand has placed the scene in that Black Valley which she knew so well and loved so dearly. It is the first of her novels in which she celebrates her birthplace. There are walks along the country pathways, long meditations at night, village weddings and fetes. All the poetry and all the picturesqueness of the country transform and embellish the story.

In _Jacques_ we have the history of a man unhappily married, and this, through the reciprocity which is inevitable under the circ.u.mstances, is another story of a woman unhappily married.

At the age of thirty-five, after a stormy existence, in which years count double, Jacques marries Fernande, a woman much younger than he is. After a few unhappy months he sees the first clouds appearing in his horizon. He sends for his sister Sylvia to come and live with himself and his wife. Sylvia, like Jacques, is an exceptional individual. She is proud, haughty and reserved. It can readily be imagined that, the presence of this pythoness does not tend to restore the confidence which has become somewhat shaken between the husband and wife. A young man named Octave, who was at first attracted by Sylvia, soon begins to prefer Fernande, who is not a romantic, ironical and sarcastic woman like her sister-in-law. He fancies that he should be very happy with the gentle Fernande. Jacques discovers that Octave and his wife are in love with each other. There are various alternatives for him. He can dismiss his rival, kill him, or merely pardon him. Each alternative is a very ordinary way out of the difficulty, and Jacques cannot resign himself to anything ordinary. He therefore asks his wife's lover whether he really cares for his wife, whether he is in earnest, and also whether this attachment will be durable. Quite satisfied with the result of this examination, he leaves Fernande to Octave. He then disappears and kills himself, but he takes all necessary precautions to avert the suspicion of suicide, in order not to sadden Octave and Fernande in their happiness. He had not been able to keep his wife's love, but he does not wish to be the jailer of the woman who no longer loves him. Fernande has a right to happiness and, as he has not been able to ensure that happiness, he must give place to another man. It is a case of suicide as a duty. There are instances when a husband should know that it is his duty to disappear. . . . Jacques is "a stoic." George Sand has a great admiration for such characters. She gives us her first sketch of one in Ralph, but Jacques is presented to us as a sublime being.

Personally, I look upon him as a mere greenhorn, or, as would be said in Wagner's dramas, a "pure simpleton."

He did everything to ruin his home life. His young wife had confidence in him; she was gay and naive. He went about, folding his arms in a tragic way. He was absent-minded and gloomy, and she began to be awed by him. One day, when, in her sorrow for having displeased him, she flung herself on her knees, sobbing, instead of lifting her up tenderly, he broke away from her caresses, telling her furiously to get up and never to behave in such a way again in his presence. After this he puts his sister, the "bronze woman," between them, and he invites Octave to live with them. When he has thus destroyed his wife's affection for him, in spite of the fact that at one time she wished for nothing better than to love him, he goes away and gives up the whole thing. All that is too easy. One of Meilhac's heroines says to a man, who declares that he is going to drown himself for her sake, "Oh yes, that is all very fine. You would be tranquil at the bottom of the water! But what about me? . . ."

In this instance Jacques is tranquil at the bottom of his precipice, but Fernande is alive and not at all tranquil. Jacques never rises to the very simple conception of his duty, which was that, having made a woman the companion of his life's journey, he had no right to desert her on the way.

Rather than blame himself, though, Jacques prefers incriminating the inst.i.tution of marriage. The criticism of this inst.i.tution is very plain in the novel we are considering. In her former novels George, Sand treated all this in a more or less vague way. She now states her theory clearly. Jacques considers that marriage is a barbarous inst.i.tution.

"I have not changed my opinion," he says, "and I am not reconciled to society. I consider marriage one of the most barbarous inst.i.tutions ever invented. I have no doubt that it will be abolished when the human species makes progress in the direction of justice and reason. Some bond that will be more human and just as sacred will take the place of marriage and provide for the children born of a woman and a man, without fettering their liberty for ever. Men are too coa.r.s.e at present, and women too cowardly, to ask for a n.o.bler law than the iron one which governs them. For individuals without conscience and without virtue, heavy chains are necessary."

We also hear Sylvia's ideas and the plans she proposes to her brother for the time when marriage is abolished.

"We will adopt an orphan, imagine that it is our child, and bring it up in our principles. We could educate a child of each s.e.x, and then marry them when the time came, before G.o.d, with no other temple than the desert and no priest but love. We should have formed their souls to respect truth and justice, so that, thanks to us, there would be one pure and happy couple on the face of the earth."

The suppression of marriage, then, was the idea, and, in a future more or less distant, free love!

It is interesting to discover by what series of deductions George Sand proceeds and on what principles she bases everything. When once her principles are admitted, the conclusion she draws from them is quite logical.

What is her essential objection to marriage? The fact that marriage fetters the liberty of two beings. "Society dictates to you the formula of an oath. You must swear that you will be faithful and obedient to me, that you will never love any one but me, and that you will obey me in everything. One of those oaths is absurd and the other vile. You cannot be answerable for your heart, even if I were the greatest and most perfect of men." Now comes the question of love for another man. Until then it was considered that such love was a weakness, and that it might become a fault. But, after all, is not pa.s.sion a fatal and irresistible thing?

"No human creature can command love, and no one is to be blamed for feeling it or for ceasing to feel it. What lowers a woman is untruth." A little farther on we are told: "They are not guilty, for they love each other. There is no crime where there is sincere love." According to this theory, the union of man and woman depends on love alone. When love disappears, the union cannot continue. Marriage is a human inst.i.tution, but pa.s.sion is of Divine essence. In case of any dissension, it is always the inst.i.tution of marriage which is to be blamed.

The sole end in view of marriage is charm, either that of sentiment or that of the senses, and its sole object is the exchange of two fancies.

As the oath of fidelity is either a stupidity or a degradation, can anything more opposed to common sense, and a more absolute ignorance of all that is n.o.ble and great, be imagined than the effort mankind is making, against all the chances of destruction by which he is surrounded, to affirm, in face of all that changes, his will and intention to continue? We all remember the heart-rending lamentation of Diderot: "The first promises made between two creatures of flesh," he says, "were made at the foot of a rock crumbling to dust. They called on Heaven to be a witness of their constancy, but the skies in the Heaven above them were never the same for an instant. Everything was changing, both within them and around them, and they believed that their heart would know no change. Oh, what children, what children always!" Ah, not children, but what men rather! We know these fluctuations in our affections. And it is because we are afraid of our own fragility that we call to our aid the protection of laws, to which submission is no slavery, as it is voluntary submission. Nature does not know these laws, but it is by them that we distinguish ourselves from Nature and that we rise above it. The rock on which we tread crumbles to dust, the sky above our heads is never the same an instant, but, in the depth of our hearts, there is the moral law--and that never changes!

In order to reply to these paradoxes, where shall we go in search of our arguments? We can go to George Sand herself. A few years later, during her intercourse with Lamennals, she wrote her famous _Lettres a Marcie_ for _Le Monde_. She addresses herself to an imaginary correspondent, to a woman supposed to be suffering from that agitation and impatience which she had experienced herself.

"You are sad," says George Sand to her, "you are suffering, and you are bored to death." We will now take note of some of the advice she gives to this woman. She no longer believes that it belongs to human dignity to have the liberty of changing. "The one thing to which man aspires, the thing which makes him great, is permanence in the moral state. All which tends to give stability to our desires, to strengthen the human will and affections, tends to bring about the _reign of G.o.d_ on earth, which means love and the practice of truth." She then speaks of vain dreams. "Should we even have time to think about the impossible if we did all that is necessary? Should we despair ourselves if we were to restore hope in those people who have nothing left them but hope?" With regard to feminist claims, she says: "Women are crying out that they are slaves: let them wait until men are free! . . . In the mean time we must not compromise the future by our impatience with the present. . . . It is to be feared that vain attempts of this kind and unjustifiable claims may do harm to what is styled at present the cause of women. There is no doubt that women have certain rights and that they are suffering injustice. They ought to lay claim to a better future, to a wise independence, to a greater partic.i.p.ation in knowledge, and to more respect, interest and esteem from men. This future, though, is in their own hands."

This is wisdom itself. It would be impossible to put it more clearly, and to warn women in a better way, that the greatest danger for their cause would be the triumph of what is called by an ironical term--feminism.

These retractions, though, have very little effect. There is a certain piquancy in showing up an author who is in contradiction with himself, in showing how he refutes his own paradoxes. But these are striking paradoxes which are not readily forgotten. What I want to show is that in these first novels by George Sand we have about the whole of the feminist programme of to-day. Everything is there, the right to happiness, the necessity of reforming marriage, the inst.i.tution, in a more or less near future, of free unions. Our feminists of to-day, French, English, or Norwegian auth.o.r.esses, and theoricians like Ellen Key, with her book on _Love and Marriage_, all these rebels have invented nothing. They have done nothing but take up once more the theories of the great feminist of 1832, and expose them with less lyricism but with more cynicism.

George Sand protested against the accusation of having aimed at attacking inst.i.tutions in her feminist novels. She was wrong in protesting, as it is just this which gives her novels their value and significance. It is this which dates them and which explains the enormous force of expansion that they have had. They came just after the July Revolution, and we must certainly consider them as one of the results of that. A throne had just been overturned, and, by way of pastime, churches were being pillaged and an archbishop's palace had been sackaged. Literature was also attempting an insurrection, by way of diversion. For a long time it had been feeding the revolutionary ferment which it had received from romanticism. Romanticism had demanded the freedom of the individual, and the writers at the head of this movement were Chateaubriand, Victor Hugo and Dumas. They claimed this freedom for Rene, for Hermann and for Antony, who were men. An example had been given, and women meant to take advantage of it. Women now began their revolution.

Under all these influences, and in the particular atmosphere now created, the matrimonial mishap of Baronne Dudevant appeared to her of considerable importance. She exaggerated and magnified it until it became of social value. Taking this private mishap as her basis, she puts into each of her heroines something of herself. This explains the pa.s.sionate tone of the whole story. And this pa.s.sion could not fail to be contagious for the women who read her stories, and who recognized in the novelist's cause their own cause and the cause of all women.

This, then, is the novelty in George Sand's way of presenting feminist grievances. She had not invented these grievances. They were already contained in Madame de Stael's books, and I have not forgotten her.

Delphine and Corinne, though, were women of genius, and presented to us as such. In order to be pitied by Madame de Stael, it was absolutely necessary to be a woman of genius. For a woman to be defended by George Sand, it was only necessary that she should not love her husband, and this was a much more general thing.

George Sand had brought feminism within the reach of all women. This is the characteristic of these novels, the eloquence of which cannot be denied. They are novels for the vulgarization of the feminist theory.

IV