Indiana (Oxford World's Classics) (Paperback)

by George Sand (Author), Sylvia Raphael (Translator), Naomi Schor (Introduction) "ON a chilly wet autumn evening, in a little manor house in Brie, three people, lost in thought, were solemnly watching the embers burn in..." (more)
Key Phrases: Madame Delmare, Sir Ralph, Madame de Ramière (more...)

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.

Product Description
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.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (January 11, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0192837974
• ISBN-13: 978-0192837974
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #459,379 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 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

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.

8 of 8 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.

17 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Shifting reputation, April 5, 2005

By	Peter Reeve (Thousand Oaks, CA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Remembered mostly as the lover of Chopin and other celebrities of the nineteenth-century art world, Sand seems to be little-read these days. Yet in her day, she was the most respected woman writer in the world.

This was her first solo effort. She collaborated on a previous novel, but referred to Indiana as her first. Some of the dialogue is decidedly overheated; real Harlequin Romance, bodice-ripper stuff. The story however, is very strong, with constant surprising twists, right to the end. As usual in melodrama, the villains are more interesting than the heroes, who at times make you want to shake some sense into them.

The theme has obvious parallels with Flaubert's "Madame Bovary" and Kate Chopin's "The Awakening". Ironically, the latter author, sharing the name of Sand's most famous lover, is more widely read today.

The novel has many references to French social and political life, and more than a few pages which are pure polemic. We learn more about Sand's views on French society than about Indiana's. Some readers will welcome these as fascinating historical insights; others will regard them as annoying distractions. The timeline of the story includes the revolution of 1830 and although this action provides a background rather than taking center stage, it neatly meshes with the mental turmoil of the heroine.

The Signet Classic edition has an excellent introduction by Marylon Yalom.