Mauprat | Page 7

early years of married life were not absolutely
intolerable. In 1831, however, she could endure him no longer, and an
amicable separation was agreed upon. She left M. Dudevant at Nohant,
resigning her fortune, and proceeded to Paris, where she was hard
pressed to find a living. She endeavoured, without success, to paint the
lids of cigar-boxes, and in final desperation, under the influence of
Jules Sandeau--who became her lover, and who invented the
pseudonym of George Sand for her--she turned her attention to
literature. Her earliest work was to help Sandeau in the composition of
his novel, "Rose et Blanche" Her first independent novel, "Indiana,"
appeared at the close of 1831, and her second, "Valentine," two months
later. These books produced a great and immediate sensation, and she
felt that she had found her vocation. In 1833 she produced "Lebia"; in
1834 the "Lettres d'un Voyageur" and "Jacques"; in 1835 "Andre" and
"Leone Leoni." After this her works become too numerous and were
produced with too monotonous a regularity to be chronicled here. But it
should be said that "Mauprat" was written in 1836 at Nohant, while she
was pleading for a legal separation from her husband, which was given
her by the tribunal of Bourges, with full authority over the education of
her children. These early novels all reflect in measure the personal
sorrows of the author, although George Sand never ceased to protest
against too strict a biographical interpretation of their incidents.
"Spiridion" (1839), composed under the influence of Lamennais, deals
with questions of free thought in religion. But the novels of the first
period of her literary activity, which came to a close in 1840, are
mainly occupied with a lyrical individualism, and are inspired by the
wrongs and disillusions of the author's personal adventures.
The years 1833 and 1834 were marked by her too-celebrated relations
with Alfred de Musset, with whom she lived in Paris and at Venice,
and with whom she quarrelled at last in circumstances deplorably
infelicitous. Neither of these great creatures had the reticence to
exclude the world from a narrative of their misfortunes and adventures;

of the two it was fairly certainly the woman who came the less injured
out of the furnace. In "Elle et Lui" (1859) she gave long afterward her
version of the unhappy and undignified story. Her stay in Venice
appears to have impressed her genius more deeply than any other
section of her numerous foreign sojournings.
The writings of George Sand's second period, which extended from
1840 to 1848, are of a more general character, and are tinged with a
generous but not very enlightened ardour for social emancipation. Of
these novels, the earliest is "Le Compagnon du Tour de France" (1840),
which is scarcely a masterpiece. In the pursuit of foreign modes of
thought, and impelled by experiences of travel, George Sand rose to far
greater heights in "Jeanne" (1842), in "Consuelo" (1842-'43), and in
"La Comtesse de Rudolstade" (1844). All these books were composed
in her retirement at Nohant, where she definitely settled in 1839, after
having travelled for several months in Switzerland with Liszt and Mme.
d'Agoult, and having lived in the island of Majorca for some time with
the dying Chopin, an episode which is enshrined in her "Lucrezia
Floriani" (1847).
The Revolution of 1848 appeared to George Sand a realization of her
Utopian dreams, and plunged her thoughts into a painful disorder. She
soon, however, became dissatisfied with the result of her republican
theories, and she turned to two new sources of success, the country
story and the stage. Her delicious romance of "Francois le Champi"
(1850) attracted a new and enthusiastic audience to her, and her entire
emancipation from "problems" was marked in the pages of "La Petite
Fadette" and of "La Mare au Diable." To the same period belong "Les
Visions de la Nuit des les Campagnes," "Les Maitres Sonneurs," and
"Cosina." From 1850 to 1864 she gave a great deal of attention to the
theatre, and of her numerous pieces several enjoyed a wide and
considerable success, although it cannot be said that any of her plays
have possessed the vitality of her best novels. The most solid of the
former was her dramatization of her story, "Le Marquis de Villemer"
(1864), which was one of the latest, and next to it "Le Mariage de
Victorine" (1851), which was one of the earliest. Her successes on the
stage, such as they are, appear mainly due to collaboration with others.

In her latest period, from 1860 to 1876, George Sand returned to her
first lyrical manner, although with more reticence and a wider
experience of life. Of the very abundant fruitage of these last years, not
many rank with the masterpieces of her earlier periods, although such
novels as "Tamaris" (1862),