George Sand: A Woman's Life Writ Large (Hardcover)

~ Belinda Jack (Author) "There is a strange unreality about the details of Aurore's birth, at least the way it is told in the autobiography, Histoire de ma vie..." (more)
Key Phrases: Mme Dupin, George Sand, Mother Superior (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

She was the most notorious female writer of her age, as famous for open love affairs and the habit of dressing in men's clothes as for wildly popular novels such as Indiana and Consuelo, many of which delineated women's struggles for fulfillment. George Sand's long, prolific life (1804-76) has prompted many biographies, from André Maurois's 1952 classic, Lélia, to a plethora of stimulating feminist rethinkings in the 1970s.

British scholar Belinda Jack's perspicacious new book makes a welcome addition to the genre. Taking a selective, interpretive approach, Jack spends a good deal of time on Aurore Dupin's tumultuous childhood. Torn between her aristocratic grandmother and her erratic mother after her father's untimely death, Aurore gained "precocious insights into the complexities of class and the respective lots of men and women," Jack argues; those insights, galvanized by passionate prose and scandalous subject matter, fueled the novels she published under the pen name George Sand. Jack pithily depicts the famous romances with Alfred de Musset and Frédéric Chopin, as well as Sand's less well known but intense affair with the actress Marie Dorval. She limns an appealing woman and a protean artist, too often stereotyped as the quintessential French Romantic when in fact Sand's view of identity as "multiple and constantly changing" sounds a note that rings true today. --Wendy Smith

From Publishers Weekly

First and foremost the story of a social pioneer and intellectual acrobat, Jack's exploration of the life of George Sand (1804-1876) is not a standard literary biography. Jack is particularly insightful in her claim that for Sand, literature was not itself the goal of life, but rather a tool with which to probe her psyche in preparation for life. Thus Jack, a lecturer in French at Oxford, finds the seed of Sand's infatuation with the actress Marie Dorval in the inverted gender roles that drive her fiction of the period. And she suggests that Sand's creativity flowed from her writing to the enactment of her fantasies. "She wrote a great deal from personal experience," Jack explains. "But more usually she tested out, in her fiction, possibilities for life which she then had the courage to live out, after the writing event." Sand's diverse literary output, many sexual experiments and seemingly endless array of interests (which ranged from engaging in political activism to painting to making jam), according to the author, were all expressions of a single desire: Sand wanted to dictate the scope of her own life. She identified with both her mother's lower-class background and her father's aristocratic bearing; she thrilled in her femininity but often displayed what was deemed a manly love of physical exercise and intellectual freedom. Though Jack's approach seems at times a bit too coldly analytical for such a robust, effusive subject, she communicates, with unflagging compassion and grace, the force with which Sand traversed life, ignoring critics, defying cultural taboos and trumpeting her individuality. 16 pages of b&w illus. (Aug.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; First edition. edition (August 22, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679455019
• ISBN-13: 978-0679455011
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,437,170 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Psychological Portrait, May 24, 2002

By	"[e-mail]" (Davis, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: George Sand: A Woman's Life Writ Large (Paperback)

I strongly commend this book to anyone and everyone who desires to learn more about the psychological makeup of George Sand. The author of this excellent book does not hesitate to share her own conclusions and hypotheses about George Sand's character, and gives special emphasis to both the origins of her makeup and the contradictions in her thought process and conduct. I have read several other good biographies of George Sand, and while I prefer not to rank them, my knowledge of George Sand would be very incomplete if I had not read and digested this too. While the other biographies have given a lot of emphasis to her relation with Chopin, this biography probably slights Chopin in favor of the many other (and probably more important) men and women in her life. Once you begin to read this book, you will not be able to return it to its shelf until you finish it.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Lelio, August 7, 2003

By	A. G. Plumb "Greg Plumb" (Melbourne, Australia) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: George Sand: A Woman's Life Writ Large (Paperback)

I have enjoyed several female writers immensely (George Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Emma Goldman and, especially, Anna Kavan) but have never read George Sand. However, I do know of the woman by her link to Frederic Chopin. I suspect many readers of this biography - me included - will pick the book up because of their interest in music rather than literature.

George Sand's life was certainly extraordinary, just as she was. And there is no doubt now that I will read at least one of her novels. In those regards this biography is demonstrably a success. But in other ways it failed me. I have named this review 'Lelio' by the name Hector Berlioz (a contemporary of Sand) gave the sequel to his Symphonie Fantastique. (Berlioz is mentioned three times in the biography but only one of these references is indexed.) What is the link with George Sand? Belinda Jack does not explore this. George Sand wrote a short story 'La marquise' in which there is a character Lelio. She later wrote a novel called 'Lelia'. What does the name mean and are there any connections? Music lovers would probably like to know. I turned to David Cairns translation of 'The Memoirs of Hector Berlioz' and he reveals that Berlioz' work came after 'La marquise' and hence may have been inspired by it, but before Sand's novel 'Lelia'. It is notes of this type that greatly enrich works. I suggest that Belinda Jack has failed to provide this type of enrichment in her biography. Here is another example: Delacroix spent a lot of time with George Sand and we are all familiar with his portrait of Chopin - unfinished though it is. We are less familiar with the fact that he painted Sand as well (even more unfinished). The question to ask is why was it not finished. Even more, in the illustrations to the biography why do we only get Delacroix's portrait of Chopin? (You can find the portrait of Sand on the internet.) At another point Belinda Jack reports that Sand's reading included a bunch of writers - one of whom is called Hoffmann. ETA Hoffmann I wondered? No - the index told me it was Ernst Hoffmann, someone I have no knowledge of. By telling the reader upfront that it was Ernst Hoffmann might help avoid possible misunderstanding. But at least it was in the index. There are many people referred to in this biography whose name means nothing to me and it may have been useful to have short summaries of them and their significance. I happen to know who Proudhon was (libertarian anarchist) but I suspect many readers won't. And again, uncommented is the strangeness of the Sand family having a servant with the unlikely name of Carl Maria von Weber - especially strange to music lovers.

But despite these quibbles I value reading this biography and rate it well.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Life Lived Greatly, September 14, 2004

By	V. Marshall (North Fork, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: George Sand: A Woman's Life Writ Large (Paperback)

George Sand lived larger than many lives today during a time when women were cattle and broodmares she managed to enforce the beginnings of feminism upon French society.

Born Aurora Dupin, George Sand changed her name to that of a man so that she could write and earn a living during 19th century France, by doing so she made herself as famous for her lifestyle and character as for her writings. Sand is explained as an extraordinarily complex woman who refuses to stay in a box that denies her freedom. She explores passion and sexual escapades with such renowned figures as, Alfred Musset, Chopin, Liszt, Flaubert and many others not so well known. Sand laughed in society's face and stunned them all with her outrageous take on life becoming one of the world's first feminists, defending the rights of women in marriage and in a masculine culture. Sand walked around Paris alone, dressed in men's clothing and assumed herself to be free of the stigmas most women cowered to; for this Sand must be acknowledged and Belinda Jack has accomplished that in this interesting biography of Sand's life.

Belinda Jack writes well but tends to stick to many facts and less description. She keeps this biography geared on Sand and her accomplishments rather than the scandals that most people place their attentions on. Sand is explained as a child who grew up conflicted on status and her place in life, through this she appears capable of staying on the outside of society and becoming a great observer of human nature and character. It is said that Sand had so many relationships because she needed inspiration for her stories. Jack writes about the connection Sand has to animals and nature, to philosophical ideologies and religious teachings and interestingly enough it seems that Sand felt guided to art because she felt that the magnificence of God existed within the creation of beauty. Sand's approach to life seems to fit into modern society rather than the one she was born into and we can only imagine what an extraordinary woman she would be today had she lived in this century. One of my favorite lines in the book is, "Not to be noticed as a man, one has first to be used to not being noticed as a woman."

George Sand is astonishing and a true rebel against the machine that tries to hold individuals back from independent thought. This biography brings to light the struggle of women and George Sand overcomes it by portraying a man with more depth and compassion than the lesser gender has ever been capable of. It seems that Sand was so often bored in her relationships because the men lacked her strength and although she was not considered a proper beauty her talented personality and search for freedom was what caused her to be the ultimate femme fatale! Sand's life is worth celebrating and Belinda Jack has done an excellent job in bringing this shining light back into existence.