{"id":253830,"date":"2026-07-13T03:05:13","date_gmt":"2026-07-13T00:05:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/1kitap1.com\/en\/becoming-george-fiona-sampson\/"},"modified":"2026-07-13T03:05:13","modified_gmt":"2026-07-13T00:05:13","slug":"becoming-george-fiona-sampson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1kitap1.com\/en\/becoming-george-fiona-sampson\/","title":{"rendered":"Becoming George – Fiona Sampson"},"content":{"rendered":"
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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 \u2018G.<\/p>\n

Sand\u2019 on its title page. The revised nom de guerre is a lateral hop from the \u2018J. Sand\u2019 that denoted both someone who was and someone who wasn\u2019t Jules Sandeau. \u2018G.\u2019, which stands for \u2018Georges\u2019 and not yet \u2018George\u2019, denotes only Aurore. The book itself opens a little stiffly.<\/p>\n

Its first pages, set in the drawing room of a \u2018small castle [castel] in Brie\u2019, 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\u2019s Colonel Delmare, \u2018heavy and bald with a grey moustache and a fierce look, [who] made everyone tremble, wife, servants, dogs and horses\u2019 and who is casually brutal to his wife\u2019s dog; while the eponymous nineteen-year-old Indiana Delmare adopts a \u2018weary attitude, her long dark hair hanging down her emaciated cheeks, and dull rings under her dulled, inflamed eyes\u2019.37 A claustrophobic mode suggests depression, and resistance casts a gothic shadow around a figure lurking in the castle\u2019s twilit grounds.<\/p>\n

Soon the colonel has shot and injured this interloper, whom he assumes to be Indiana\u2019s 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 \u2013 and is soon ranging widely. Raymon moves on from the maid to her mistress but \u2013 being Only After One Thing \u2013 refuses to accompany Indiana home to the colony known as \u00cele de Bourbon (after the dynasty, not the drink), which will later become R\u00e9union.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\u2013female relationships; gendered power as gender colonialism.<\/p>\n

But the distance between them also sweetly symbolises the effort true love demands. Raymon renounces Indiana because he doesn\u2019t want to be merely her follower \u2013 echoes of Jules Sandeau?<\/p>\n

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I don\u2019t 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 GU\u00c9ROULT, 6 MAY 1835 I am truly myself, in a word, which doesn\u2019t stop pleasing me. GEORGE SAND, HISTOIRE DE MA VIE . . . the essence peculiar to Fran\u00e7ois le Champi.<\/p>\n

Under its so ordinary events, such normal things in such everyday words, I felt a kind of tone, a strange emphasis. MARCEL PROUST, DU C\u00d4T\u00c9 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.<\/p>\n

\u2013 La Mare au diable (The Devil\u2019s Pool, 1846) When i started to write about George Sand, I imagined myself following a trail of the writer\u2019s 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\u2019s gone before it, to what\u2019s going on in the surrounding culture and, on a more practical and immediate level, to the author\u2019s editors and critics and \u2013 most of all \u2013 her readers.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s written for publication can\u2019t 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\u2019re reading, and everything that what we\u2019re reading is in conversation with, and on \u2013 in a ceaselessly ramifying net of connections.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.<\/em><\/p>\n

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