George Sand

Sand was one of many notable 19th-century women who chose to wear male attire in public. In 1800, the police issued an order requiring women to apply for a permit in order to wear male clothing. Some women applied for health, occupational, or recreational reasons (e.g., horseback riding), but many women chose to wear pants and other traditional male attire in public without receiving a permit. They did so as well for practical reasons, but also at times to subvert dominant stereotypes.[9] Sand was one of the women who wore men's clothing without a permit, justifying them as being less expensive and far sturdier than the typical dress of a noblewoman at the time. In addition to being comfortable, Sand's male attire enabled her to circulate more freely in Paris than most of her female contemporaries, and gave her increased access to venues from which women were often barred, even women of her social standing. Also scandalous was Sand's smoking tobacco in public; neither peerage nor gentry had yet sanctioned the free indulgence of women in such a habit, especially in public (though Franz Liszt's paramour Marie d'Agoult affected this as well, smoking large cigars). While there were many contemporary critics of her comportment, many people accepted her behaviour until they became shocked with the subversive tone of her novels.[5] Those who found her writing admirable were not bothered by her ambiguous or rebellious public behaviour. As Victor Hugo commented, “George Sand cannot determine whether she is male or female. I entertain a high regard for all my colleagues, but it is not my place to decide whether she is my sister or my brother.”[10]

George Sand by Nadar, 1864

In 1822, at the age of eighteen, Sand married Casimir Dudevant[11] (1795–1871; first name "François"), out-of-wedlock son of Baron Jean-François Dudevant. She and Dudevant had two children: Maurice (1823–1889) and Solange (1828–1899). In 1825 she had an intense but perhaps platonic affair with the young lawyer Aurélien de Sèze.[12] In early 1831, she left her husband and entered upon a four- or five-year period of "romantic rebellion." In 1835, she was legally separated from Dudevant, and took custody of their children.[13]

Sand had romantic affairs with Jules Sandeau (1831), Prosper Mérimée, Alfred de Musset (summer 1833 – March 1835), Louis-Chrysostome Michel, Pierre-François Bocage, Charles Didier, Félicien Mallefille, Louis Blanc, and composer Frédéric Chopin (1837–1847).[14] Later in her life, she corresponded with Gustave Flaubert, and despite their differences in temperament and aesthetic preference, they eventually became close friends. She engaged in an intimate friendship with actress Marie Dorval, which led to widespread but unconfirmed rumours of a romantic affair.[15]

Sand spent the winter of 1838–1839 with Chopin in Majorca at the (formerly abandoned) Carthusian monastery of Valldemossa.[16] The trip to Majorca was described in her Un hiver à Majorque (A Winter in Majorca), first published in 1841.[17] Chopin was already ill with incipient tuberculosis at the beginning of their relationship, and spending a cold and wet winter in Majorca where they could not get proper lodgings exacerbated his symptoms.[18] They separated two years before his death for a variety of reasons.[19] In her novel Lucrezia Floriani, Sand used Chopin as a model for a sickly Eastern European prince named Karol. He is cared for by a middle-aged actress past her prime, Lucrezia, who suffers a great deal through her affection for Karol.[20] Though Sand claimed not to have made a cartoon out of Chopin, the book's publication and widespread readership may have exacerbated their later antipathy towards each other. The tipping point in their relationship involved her daughter Solange.

Sand as Mary Magdalene in a sketch by Louis Boulanger

Chopin continued to be cordial to Solange after she and her husband, Auguste Clésinger, had a falling out with Sand over money. Sand took Chopin's support of Solange to be extremely disloyal, and confirmation that Chopin had always "loved" Solange.[21] Sand's son Maurice also disliked Chopin. Maurice wanted to establish himself as the "man of the estate" and did not wish to have Chopin as a rival. Chopin was never asked back to Nohant; in 1848, he returned to Paris from a tour of the United Kingdom, to die at the Place Vendôme in the following year. Chopin was penniless at that time; his friends had to pay for his stay there, as well as his funeral at the Madeleine. The funeral was attended by over 3,000 people, including Eugène Delacroix, Franz Liszt, Victor Hugo and other notables. George Sand was notably absent.[22]

Sand died at Nohant, near Châteauroux, in France's Indre département on 8 June 1876, at the age of 71. She was buried in the private graveyard behind the chapel at Nohant-Vic.[23] In 2003, plans that her remains be moved to the Panthéon in Paris resulted in controversy.[24][25]

In addition, Sand authored literary criticism and political texts. In her early life, she sided with the poor and working class as well as women's rights. When the 1848 Revolution began, she was an ardent republican. Sand started her own newspaper, which was published in a workers' co-operative.[32]

Politically, she became very active after 1841 and the leaders of the day often consulted with her and took her advice. She was a member of the provisional government of 1848, and during Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte’s coup d’état of December 1851, she negotiated pardons and reduced sentences for her friends.[4]

Sand was known for her implication and writings during the Paris Commune, where she took a position for the Versailles assembly against the "communards," urging them to take violent action against the "rebels."[33] She was appalled by the violence of the Paris Commune. She wrote: "The horrible adventure continues. They ransom, they threaten, they arrest, they judge. They have taken over all the city halls, all the public establishments, they’re pillaging the munitions and the food supplies."[34]

Sand's writing was immensely popular during her lifetime and she was highly respected by the literary and cultural elite in France. Victor Hugo, in the eulogy he gave at her funeral, said "the lyre was within her."[36]

In this country whose law is to complete the French Revolution and begin that of the equality of the sexes, being a part of the equality of men, a great woman was needed. It was necessary to prove that a woman could have all the manly gifts without losing any of her angelic qualities, be strong without ceasing to be tender ... George Sand proved it.

— Victor Hugo, Les funérailles de George Sand

Eugène Delacroix was a close friend and respected her literary gifts.[37] Flaubert, by no means an indulgent or forbearing critic, was an unabashed admirer. Honoré de Balzac, who knew Sand personally, once said that if someone thought she wrote badly, it was because their own standards of criticism were inadequate. He also noted that her treatment of imagery in her works showed that her writing had an exceptional subtlety, having the ability to "virtually put the image in the word."[38][39] Alfred de Vigny referred to her as "Sappho".[36]

Not all of her contemporaries admired her or her writing: poet Charles Baudelaire was one contemporary critic of George Sand:[40] "She is stupid, heavy and garrulous. Her ideas on morals have the same depth of judgment and delicacy of feeling as those of janitresses and kept women ... The fact that there are men who could become enamoured of this slut is indeed a proof of the abasement of the men of this generation."[41]