Becoming George – Fiona Sampson

Now, the distance between the couple as writers turns out to be not only quantitative but qualitative, for Aurore has brought back with her from Indre a manuscript that is entirely her own and that represents a step change in the calibre of her work. Her debut novel, Indiana, is published by Jean-Pierre Roret on her return to Paris. Appearing in May, it is the first book with ‘G.

Sand’ on its title page. The revised nom de guerre is a lateral hop from the ‘J. Sand’ that denoted both someone who was and someone who wasn’t Jules Sandeau. ‘G.’, which stands for ‘Georges’ and not yet ‘George’, denotes only Aurore. The book itself opens a little stiffly.

Its first pages, set in the drawing room of a ‘small castle [castel] in Brie’, give little sign that this breakthrough novel will be a tremendous, enduring success. As the characters are introduced they move awkwardly, like actors in need of a warm-up. There’s Colonel Delmare, ‘heavy and bald with a grey moustache and a fierce look, [who] made everyone tremble, wife, servants, dogs and horses’ and who is casually brutal to his wife’s dog; while the eponymous nineteen-year-old Indiana Delmare adopts a ‘weary attitude, her long dark hair hanging down her emaciated cheeks, and dull rings under her dulled, inflamed eyes’.37 A claustrophobic mode suggests depression, and resistance casts a gothic shadow around a figure lurking in the castle’s twilit grounds.

Soon the colonel has shot and injured this interloper, whom he assumes to be Indiana’s lover, but who turns out instead to be a new neighbour, a nobleman called Raymon. His lover is not Mme Delmare but her maid, Noun. (Raymon is, oddly, the name Aurore first toyed with for Maurice.38) Now the writing begins to move – and is soon ranging widely. Raymon moves on from the maid to her mistress but – being Only After One Thing – refuses to accompany Indiana home to the colony known as Île de Bourbon (after the dynasty, not the drink), which will later become Réunion.39 As the characters shift between France and this island in the ocean after which Indiana is named, the relationship between the territories becomes a metaphor for male–female relationships; gendered power as gender colonialism.

But the distance between them also sweetly symbolises the effort true love demands. Raymon renounces Indiana because he doesn’t want to be merely her follower – echoes of Jules Sandeau?

I don’t aspire to the dignity of man. It seems to me too laughable to be much preferable to the servility of woman. [. . .] So take me for a man or a woman as you wish. GEORGE SAND TO ADOLPHE GUÉROULT, 6 MAY 1835 I am truly myself, in a word, which doesn’t stop pleasing me. GEORGE SAND, HISTOIRE DE MA VIE . . . the essence peculiar to François le Champi.

Under its so ordinary events, such normal things in such everyday words, I felt a kind of tone, a strange emphasis. MARCEL PROUST, DU CÔTÉ DE CHEZ SWANN 1kitap1.com/en Contents Introduction Chapter One: Dawn First impression In the garden Chapter Two: The very rich hours Second impression Criss-cross Chapter Three: Reveries of a solitary walker Third impression Complicity Chapter Four: Entering on tiptoe Fourth impression Costume drama Chapter Five: Becoming a writer Fifth impression Chinoiserie Chapter Six: The years of rebellion Sixth impression The soloist Chapter Seven: Duet Seventh impression Fame in a black lace mantilla Chapter Eight: Dear master Final impression Of mastery On language and sources Acknowledgements Picture credits Notes Index 1kitap1.com/en BECOMING GEORGE 1kitap1.com/en Introduction Nobody makes a revolution by themselves, and there are some, above all in the arts, which humanity accomplishes without really knowing how, because everybody has taken charge of them.

– La Mare au diable (The Devil’s Pool, 1846) When i started to write about George Sand, I imagined myself following a trail of the writer’s connections. I pictured untangling webs of mutual influence, parsing address books, calculating the result of a particular friendship, or critical reaction. All writing, I thought, is a form of dialogue. It talks to the writing that’s gone before it, to what’s going on in the surrounding culture and, on a more practical and immediate level, to the author’s editors and critics and – most of all – her readers.

What’s written for publication can’t help but speak to the world of fellow protagonists, past and present and (perhaps) future. As readers, we too take part in this great, multivocal conversation with what we’re reading, and everything that what we’re reading is in conversation with, and on – in a ceaselessly ramifying net of connections.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: ffcb0fbe69c54149
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 5,285,051 bytes (5.04 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• Pages: 302
• Language: English (en)

Reading & Word Statistics

• Estimated Reading Time: 579.24 minutes
• Total Words: 115,848
• Total Characters: 698,018
• Average Words per Page: 383.6
• Average Characters per Page: 2311.32

Most Frequent Words

george (450), aurore (345), life (322), it’s (311), sand (269), one (269), paris (252), first (241), like (223), nohant (220), even (219), she’s (215), years (196), also (191), now (183), time (179), perhaps (170), two (169), corr (169), little (162), mother (155), maurice (154), herself (148), still (143), writing (131), though (131), way (123), work (120), literary (119), marriage (118), family (117), much (116), love (116), year (116), george’s (116), woman (114), young (113), seems (111), between (109), great (108), become (108), hmv (108), https (106), new (105), yet (103), letter (103), relationship (101), aurore’s (100), home (100), kind (99), casimir (99), retrieved (99), another (96), child (95), something (93), three (91), chopin (91), since (91), grandmother (90), months (90), back (88), century (87), death (86), french (85), rue (85), hippolyte (85), writer (84), man (81), friend (81), daughter (81), future (80), jules (80), old (80), without (79), later (79), make (78), convent (78), he’s (76), world (75), name (75), end (75), well (74), women (73), whose (71), almost (71), des (71), son (71), good (70), december (69), last (69), country (68), see (68), already (68), come (67), france (67), letters (67), doesn’t (66), children (66), around (66), days (66).

PDF Download