Indiana (Oxford World's Classics) [Paperback]

George Sand (Author), Naomi Schor (Editor), Sylvia Raphael (Translator)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0192830759 | ISBN-13: 978-0192830753 | Publication Date: February 9, 1995

The first novel that George Sand wrote without a collaborator, this is not only a vivid romance, but also an impassioned plea for change in the inequitable French marriage laws of the time, and for a new view of women. It tells the story of a beautiful and innocent young woman, married at sixteen to a much older man. She falls in love with her handsome, frivolous neighbor, but discovers too late that his love is quite different from her own. This new translation, the first since 1900, does full justice to the passion and conviction of Sand's writing, and the introduction fully explores the response to Sand in her own time as well as contemporary feminist treatments.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Indiana is the first of many novels written by George Sand, a woman whose behavior was often considered more shocking than her writing. Seen as a denouncement of marriage when it was published, the novel is the story of a naive, love-starved woman abused by her much older husband and deceived by a selfish seducer. Indiana and her husband are terribly ill-suited to each other. Indiana's husband believes that "women are made to obey, not to advise;" Indiana is submissive, but "it was the silence and submissiveness of the slave who has made of hatred a virtue and of unhappiness a merit." Her seducer is an eloquent rake; as George Sand comments, "the most honorable of men is he who thinks best and acts best, but the most powerful is he who is best able to talk and write." What takes this novel beyond a simple romance of good women and bad men, however, is George Sand's ability to draw direct analogies between personal behavior and the trends and expectations of politics and society. And when one character advises, "Do not break the chains that bind you to society, respect its laws if they protect you, accept its judgments if they are fair to you: but if some day it calumniates you and spurns you, have pride enough to do without it," the reader is reminded that George Sand knew what she was talking about. -- For great reviews of books for girls, check out Let's Hear It for the Girls: 375 Great Books for Readers 2-14. -- From 500 Great Books by Women; review by Erica Bauermeister --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: French

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Product Details

• Paperback: 312 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (February 9, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0192830759
• ISBN-13: 978-0192830753
• Product Dimensions: 7.3 x 4.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,075,501 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the largely forgotten great novels, March 2, 2006

By 

ninjasuperstar (Iowa) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Indiana (Oxford World's Classics) (Paperback)

George Sand's Indiana dramatizes and explores a wide variety of concerns in the nineteenth century with a brilliance one rarely finds in a first novel: Arranged marriages, what it means to be a Creole, colonialism and plantation profiteering, slavery, the beginnings of the deterioration of Old Europe, and the rise of the businessman. In terms of narrative style, this may be one of the most unique novels I have read. The use of narrator to facilitate multiple endings is ingenious as well as baffling. Once you get to the end and discover who the narrator is or could be, you will likely want to re-read the novel, and voila! It's like experiencing the novel for the first time. It is a very rare talent indeed to create one novel for a first reading and a second novel for a second reading. It's a mystery to me how Sand has lost much of her notoriety. This novel is far superior than most you will find anywhere and in any language.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An extraordinary first novel, November 5, 2003

By 

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

This review is from: Indiana (Paperback)

I recently read a biography of George Sand and it stimulated an interest in reading some of her novels. It wasn't easy to find some, but I did manage to buy 'Indiana' and 'Mauprat' through a second-hand dealer. 'Indiana' is an interesting story of relationships especially between husbands and wives, men and women, nobility and commoners, family and strangers. The central marraige is uncharacteristic of modern Western society in that an older wealthy man has married a young woman for the status of it - he is no more than her friend, and often not even that. But there are many ways in which marraiges can fail either the woman or the man in modern Western society and consequently, for me, the symptoms of what goes on in this novel - even if not the causes - are current in modern society.

Sand's story is engaging and generally well paced. It does seem a bit like a soap opera sometimes. It also rushes to an unsatisfactory ending - a bit like the end of 'Well of Loneliness', which appalled me. But then Sand has a surprise for me - although I have a sneaking feeling that it might be an afterthought, a rewrite. What is distinctive about Sand's writing is her ability to create a visionary scene - like the one where Raymon rails against the picture of Indiana's cousin Ralph hanging in Indiana's bedroom (Raymon is there with his lover of the time - Indiana's serving girl Noun). And then there is the extraordinary scene where Indiana almost drowns in the river only to be rescued by Ralph - we see the world transform itself from Indiana's perspective in the most unsettling way.

I enjoyed this novel immensely and look forward to reading more of Sand's writing.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Doll house, February 10, 2005

By 

A.J. (Maryland) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Indiana (Oxford World's Classics) (Paperback)

George Sand (nee Amantine-Aurore-Lucile Dupin) is the kind of name I've seen in the novels of more famous writers and in the footnotes of those novels, but her own suffer from a lack of visibility on the shelves of libraries and bookstores nowadays. Reading her early novel "Indiana," I see why she was so popular and influential in her era (admirers included George Eliot and Henry James); although she is not the equal of her contemporaries Hugo and Flaubert, her writing has plenty of momentum and is pervaded by an unprecedented psychological awareness that seems well ahead of its time.

On the surface, "Indiana" is about loveless marriage, illicit romance, and the violence that results; but the characters are much more compelling and the narrative is more surprising than such a description might imply. Sand's titular heroine, whose unusual name refers not to Hoosier enthusiasm but to her birthplace of a French colonial island in the Indian Ocean, is the nineteen-year-old wife of the wealthy industrialist Colonel Delmare, a crusty, callous retired soldier old enough to be her father, who has a nice country house in Brie. The marriage was arranged, of course, and Indiana is miserable practically to the point of physical illness. That her dog is named Ophelia seems to emphasize the general despair the novel has for the feminine state.

There are two other important men in Indiana's life. One is her cousin Sir Ralph, an English baronet, who, trying to overcome a past filled with heartbreak, is protective of her but makes a valiant effort to remain friendly with her imperious husband. The other man is an impetuous Lothario named Raymon de Ramiere who infiltrates the Delmare household by seducing Indiana's beautiful Creole maid Noun and then Indiana herself. Charismatic, accustomed to adoration, Raymon is one of the most histrionic lovers in literature ("If only I could wash away with my blood the shame that I have left on this bed!"), almost comical in the intensity of his passions.

Given this woman and the three men who love her, it is clear that jealousy will be the strongest factor in driving the story; but the plot develops in unexpected ways, almost to the extent of a romantic fantasy that defies Sand's supposedly "realist" intentions. However, it is interesting that she allows the various political upheavals of France at the time, coinciding with the burgeoning Industrial Revolution reflected by references to Delmare's factory, to fuel the characters' motivations; they are not just acting in a vacuum that obliviously seals itself from the outside world.

Despite its aesthetic qualities, "Indiana" would have problems attracting a modern readership. Sylvia Raphael's English translation, as rich and garish as the icing on a decorated cake, seems naturally to evoke the novel's peculiar tone, that of the kind of antiquated melodrama that a parodist of period romances might try to achieve. And yet, assuming that the novel's style is largely defined by the mores and tastes of the French society of the 1830s, I can't help but commend Sand's intellect and craftsmanship in exploring the different meanings of love.