crisis is that Colonel Delmare is ruined, and his business affairs call
him to the Isle of Bourbon. He intends to take Indiana with him, but she
refuses to accompany him. She knows quite well that Raymon will do all
he can to prevent her going. She hurries away to him, offers herself to
him, and volunteers to remain with him always. It is unnecessary to give
Raymon's reply to this charming proposal. Poor Indiana receives a very
wet blanket on a cold winter's night.
She therefore starts for the Isle of Bourbon, and, some time after her
arrival there, she gets a letter from Raymon which makes her think that
he is very unhappy. She accordingly hastens back to him, but is received
by the young wife whom Raymon has just married. It is a very
brilliant marriage, and Raymon could not have hoped for anything more
satisfactory. Poor Indiana! The Seine, however, is quite near, and she
throws herself into it. This was quite safe, as Ralph was there to
fish her out again. Ralph was always at hand to fish his cousin out of
everything. He is her appointed rescuer, her Newfoundland dog. In the
country or in the town, on _terra firma_ or on the boat which takes
Indiana to the Isle of Bourbon, we always see Ralph turn up, phlegmatic
as usual. Unnecessary to say that Ralph is in love with Indiana. His
apparent calmness is put on purposely. It is the snowy covering under
which a volcano is burning. His awkward and unprepossessing appearance
conceals an exquisite soul. Ralph brings Indiana good news. Colonel
Delmare is dead, so that she is free. What will she do now with her
liberty? After due deliberation, Ralph and Indiana decide to commit
suicide, but they have to agree about the kind of death they will die.
Ralph considers that this is a matter of certain importance. He does not
care to kill himself in Paris; there are too many people about, so that
there is no tranquillity. The Isle of Bourbon seems to him a pleasant
place for a suicide. There was a magnificent horizon there; then, too,
there was a precipice and a waterfall. . . .
Ralph's happy ideas are somewhat sinister, but the couple set out
nevertheless for the Isle of Bourbon in search of a propitious
waterfall. A sea-voyage, under such circumstances, would be an excellent
preparation. When once there, they carry out their plans, and Ralph
gives his beloved wise advice at the last moment. She must not jump from
the side, as that would be bad. "Throw yourself into the white line that
the waterfall makes," he says. "You will then reach the lake with that,
and the torrent will plunge you in." This sounds enticing.
Such a suicide was considered infinitely poetical at that epoch, and
every one pitied Indiana in her troubles. It is curious to read such
books calmly a long time afterwards, books which reflect so exactly the
sentiments of a certain epoch. It is curious to note how the point of
view has changed, and how people and things appear to us exactly the
reverse of what they appeared to the author and to contemporaries.
As a matter of fact, the only interesting person in all this is Colonel
Delmare, or, at any rate, he is the only one of whom Indiana could
not complain. He loved her, and he loved no one else but her. The like
cannot be said for Indiana. Few husbands would imitate his patience and
forbearance, and he certainly allowed his wife the most extraordinary
freedom. At one time we find, a young man in Indiana's bedroom, and at
another time Indiana in a young man's bedroom. Colonel Delmare receives
Raymon at his house in a friendly way, and he tolerates the presence of
the sempiternal Ralph in his home. What more can be asked of a husband
than to allow his wife to have a man friend and a cousin? Indiana
declares that Colonel Delmare has struck her, and that the mark is left
on her face. She exaggerated, though, as we know quite well what took
place. In reality all this was at Plessis-Picard. Delmare-Dudevant
struck Indiana-Aurore. This was certainly too much, but there was no
blood shed. As to the other personages, Raymon is a wretched little
rascal, who was first the lover of Indiana's maid. He next made love
to poor Noun's mistress, and then deserted her to make a rich marriage.
Ralph plunges Indiana down a precipice. That was certainly bad treatment
for the woman he loved. As regards Indiana, George Sand honestly
believed that she had given her all the charms imaginable. As a matter
of fact, she did charm the readers of that time. It is from this model
that we have one of the favourite types of woman in literature for the
next twenty years--the misunderstood woman.
The misunderstood woman is pale, fragile, and subject to fainting. Up to
page 99 of the book, Indiana has fainted three times. I did not continue
counting. This fainting was not the result of bad health. It was the
fashion to faint. The days of nerves and languid airs had come back. The
women whose grandmothers had walked so firmly to the scaffold, and
whose mothers had listened bravely to the firing of the cannon under the
Empire, were now depressed and tearful, like so many plaintive elegies.
It was just a matter of fashion. The misunderstood woman was supposed
to be unhappy with her husband, but she would not have been any happier
with another man. Indiana does not find fault with Colonel Delmare for
being the husband that he is, but simply for being the husband!
"She did not love her husband, for the mere reason, perhaps, that she
was told it was her duty to love him and that it had become her second
nature, a principle and a law of her conscience to resist inwardly
all moral constraint." She affected a most irritating gentleness, an
exasperating submissiveness. When she put on her superior, resigned
airs, it was enough to unhinge an angel. Besides, what was there to
complain about, and why should she not accommodate herself to conditions
of existence with which so many others fall in? She must not be compared
to others, though. She is eminently a distinguished woman, and she asks
without shrinking: "Do you know what it means to love a woman such as I
am?"
In her long silences and her persistent melancholy, she is no doubt
thinking of the love appropriate to a woman such as she is. She was a
princess in exile and times were then hard for princesses. That is why
the one in question took refuge in her homesick sorrow. All this is what
people will not understand. Instead of rising to such sublimities, or of
being lost in fogs, they judge from mere facts. And on coming across
a young wife who is inclined to prefer a handsome, dark young man to a
husband who is turning grey, they are apt to conclude: "Well, this is
not the first time we have met with a similar case. It is hardly worth
while making such a fuss about a young plague of a woman who wants to
go to the bad." It would be very unjust, though, not to recognize that
_Indiana_ is a most remarkable novel. There is a certain relief in the
various characters, Colonel Delmare, Raymon, Ralph and Inaiana. We ought
to question the husbands who married wives belonging to the race of
misunderstood women brought into vogue by _Indiana_.
_Valentine_, too, is the story of a woman unhappily married.
This time the chief _role_ is given to the lover, and not to the woman.
Instead of the misunderstood woman, though, we have the typical frenzied
lover, created by the romantic school. Louise-Valentine de Raimbault
is about to marry Norbert-Evariste de Lansac, when suddenly this young
person, who is accustomed to going about in the country round and to the
village fetes, falls in love with the nephew of one of her farmers.
The young man's name is Benedict, and he is a peasant who has had some
education. His mentality is probably that of a present-day elementary
school-teacher. Valentine cannot resist him, although we are told that
Benedict is not very handsome. It is his soul which Valentine loves in
him. Benedict knows very well that he cannot marry Valentine, but he can
cause her a great deal of annoyance by way of proving his love. On the
night of the wedding he is in the nuptial chamber, from which the
author has taken care to banish the husband for the time being. Benedict
watches over the slumber of the woman he loves, and leaves her an
epistle in which he declares that, after hesitating whether he should
kill her husband, her, or himself, or whether he should kill all three,
or only select two of the three, and after adopting in turn each of
these combinations, he has decided to only kill himself. He is found
in a ditch in a terrible plight, but we are by no means rid of him.
Benedict is not dead, and he has a great deal of harm to do yet. We
shall meet with him again several times, always hidden behind curtains,
listening to all that is said and watching all that takes place. At the
right moment he comes out with his pistol in his hand. The husband is
away during all this time. No one troubles about him, though. He is a
bad husband, or rather he is--a husband, and Benedict has nothing to
fear as far as he is concerned. But one day a peasant, who does not like
the looks of Benedict, attacks him with his pitchfork and puts an end to
this valuable life.
The question arises, by what right Benedict disturbs Valentine's
tranquillity. The answer is by the right of his passion for her. He has
an income of about twenty pounds a year. It would be impossible for him
to marry on that. What has he to offer to the woman whose peace of mind
he disturbs and whose position he ruins? He offers himself. Surely that
should be enough. Then, too, it is impossible to reason with individuals
of his temperament. We have only to look at him, with his sickly pallor
and the restless light in his eyes. We have only to listen to the sound
of his voice and his excited speeches. At times he goes in for wild
declamation, and immediately afterwards for cold irony and sarcasm. He
is always talking of death. When he attempts to shoot himself he always
misses, but when Adele d'Hervey resists him, at the time he has taken
the name of Antony, he kills her. He is therefore a dangerous madman.
We now have two fresh personages for novels, the misunderstood woman and
the frenzied lover. It is a pity they do not marry each other, and so
rid us of them.
We must not lose sight, though, of the fact that, contestable as
_Valentine_ certainly is as a novel of passion, there is a pastoral
novel of the highest order contained in this book. The setting of the
story is delightful. George Sand has placed the scene in that Black
Valley which she knew so well and loved so dearly. It is the first of
her novels in which she celebrates her birthplace. There are walks along
the country pathways, long meditations at night, village weddings
and fetes. All the poetry and all the picturesqueness of the country
transform and embellish the story.
In _Jacques_ we have the history of a man unhappily married, and this,
through the reciprocity which is inevitable under the circumstances, is
another story of a woman unhappily married.
At the age of thirty-five, after a stormy existence, in which years
count double, Jacques marries Fernande, a woman much younger than he
is. After a few unhappy months he sees the first clouds appearing in his
horizon. He sends for his sister Sylvia to come and live with himself
and his wife. Sylvia, like Jacques, is an exceptional individual. She
is proud, haughty and reserved. It can readily be imagined that, the
presence of this pythoness does not tend to restore the confidence which
has become somewhat shaken between the husband and wife. A young man
named Octave, who was at first attracted by Sylvia, soon begins to
prefer Fernande, who is not a romantic, ironical and sarcastic woman
like her sister-in-law. He fancies that he should be very happy with the
gentle Fernande. Jacques discovers that Octave and his wife are in love
with each other. There are various alternatives for him. He can dismiss
his rival, kill him, or merely pardon him. Each alternative is a very
ordinary way out of the difficulty, and Jacques cannot resign himself to
anything ordinary. He therefore asks his wife's lover whether he really
cares for his wife, whether he is in earnest, and also whether this
attachment will be durable. Quite satisfied with the result of this
examination, he leaves Fernande to Octave. He then disappears and kills
himself, but he takes all necessary precautions to avert the suspicion
of suicide, in order not to sadden Octave and Fernande in their
happiness. He had not been able to keep his wife's love, but he does not
wish to be the jailer of the woman who no longer loves him. Fernande
has a right to happiness and, as he has not been able to ensure that
happiness, he must give place to another man. It is a case of suicide
as a duty. There are instances when a husband should know that it is his
duty to disappear. . . . Jacques is "a stoic." George Sand has a great
admiration for such characters. She gives us her first sketch of one in
Ralph, but Jacques is presented to us as a sublime being.
Personally, I look upon him as a mere greenhorn, or, as would be said in
Wagner's dramas, a "pure simpleton."
He did everything to ruin his home life. His young wife had confidence
in him; she was gay and naive. He went about, folding his arms in a
tragic way. He was absent-minded and gloomy, and she began to be awed by
him. One day, when, in her sorrow for having displeased him, she flung
herself on her knees, sobbing, instead of lifting her up tenderly, he
broke away from her caresses, telling her furiously to get up and never
to behave in such a way again in his presence. After this he puts his
sister, the "bronze woman," between them, and he invites Octave to live
with them. When he has thus destroyed his wife's affection for him, in
spite of the fact that at one time she wished for nothing better than
to love him, he goes away and gives up the whole thing. All that is too
easy. One of Meilhac's heroines says to a man, who declares that he is
going to drown himself for her sake, "Oh yes, that is all very fine. You
would be tranquil at the bottom of the water! But what about me? . . ."
In this instance Jacques is tranquil at the bottom of his precipice, but
Fernande is alive and not at all tranquil. Jacques never rises to the
very simple conception of his duty, which was that, having made a woman
the companion of his life's journey, he had no right to desert her on
the way.
Rather than blame himself, though, Jacques prefers incriminating the
institution of marriage. The criticism of this institution is very
plain in the novel we are considering. In her former novels George, Sand
treated all this in a more or less vague way. She now states her theory
clearly. Jacques considers that marriage is a barbarous institution.
"I have not changed my opinion," he says, "and I am not reconciled to
society. I consider marriage one of the most barbarous institutions
ever invented. I have no doubt that it will be abolished when the human
species makes progress in the direction of justice and reason. Some
bond that will be more human and just as sacred will take the place of
marriage and provide for the children born of a woman and a man, without
fettering their liberty for ever. Men are too coarse at present, and
women too cowardly, to ask for a nobler law than the iron one which
governs them. For individuals without conscience and without virtue,
heavy chains are necessary."
We also hear Sylvia's ideas and the plans she proposes to her brother
for the time when marriage is abolished.
"We will adopt an orphan, imagine that it is our child, and bring it up
in our principles. We could educate a child of each sex, and then marry
them when the time came, before God, with no other temple than the
desert and no priest but love. We should have formed their souls to
respect truth and justice, so that, thanks to us, there would be one
pure and happy couple on the face of the earth."
The suppression of marriage, then, was the idea, and, in a future more
or less distant, free love!
It is interesting to discover by what series of deductions George Sand
proceeds and on what principles she bases everything. When once her
principles are admitted, the conclusion she draws from them is quite
logical.
What is her essential objection to marriage? The fact that marriage
fetters the liberty of two beings. "Society dictates to you the formula
of an oath. You must swear that you will be faithful and obedient to me,
that you will never love any one but me, and that you will obey me in
everything. One of those oaths is absurd and the other vile. You cannot
be answerable for your heart, even if I were the greatest and most
perfect of men." Now comes the question of love for another man. Until
then it was considered that such love was a weakness, and that it might
become a fault. But, after all, is not passion a fatal and irresistible
thing?
"No human creature can command love, and no one is to be blamed for
feeling it or for ceasing to feel it. What lowers a woman is untruth." A
little farther on we are told: "They are not guilty, for they love each
other. There is no crime where there is sincere love." According to
this theory, the union of man and woman depends on love alone. When love
disappears, the union cannot continue. Marriage is a human institution,
but passion is of Divine essence. In case of any dissension, it is
always the institution of marriage which is to be blamed.
The sole end in view of marriage is charm, either that of sentiment or
that of the senses, and its sole object is the exchange of two fancies.
As the oath of fidelity is either a stupidity or a degradation, can
anything more opposed to common sense, and a more absolute ignorance
of all that is noble and great, be imagined than the effort mankind
is making, against all the chances of destruction by which he is
surrounded, to affirm, in face of all that changes, his will and
intention to continue? We all remember the heart-rending lamentation of
Diderot: "The first promises made between two creatures of flesh," he
says, "were made at the foot of a rock crumbling to dust. They called on
Heaven to be a witness of their constancy, but the skies in the Heaven
above them were never the same for an instant. Everything was changing,
both within them and around them, and they believed that their heart
would know no change. Oh, what children, what children always!" Ah,
not children, but what men rather! We know these fluctuations in our
affections. And it is because we are afraid of our own fragility that
we call to our aid the protection of laws, to which submission is no
slavery, as it is voluntary submission. Nature does not know these laws,
but it is by them that we distinguish ourselves from Nature and that
we rise above it. The rock on which we tread crumbles to dust, the sky
above our heads is never the same an instant, but, in the depth of our
hearts, there is the moral law--and that never changes!
In order to reply to these paradoxes, where shall we go in search of our
arguments? We can go to George Sand herself. A few years later, during
her intercourse with Lamennals, she wrote her famous _Lettres a Marcie_
for _Le Monde_. She addresses herself to an imaginary correspondent,
to a woman supposed to be suffering from that agitation and impatience
which she had experienced herself.
"You are sad," says George Sand to her, "you are suffering, and you are
bored to death." We will now take note of some of the advice she gives
to this woman. She no longer believes that it belongs to human dignity
to have the liberty of changing. "The one thing to which man aspires,
the thing which makes him great, is permanence in the moral state. All
which tends to give stability to our desires, to strengthen the human
will and affections, tends to bring about the _reign of God_ on earth,
which means love and the practice of truth." She then speaks of vain
dreams. "Should we even have time to think about the impossible if we
did all that is necessary? Should we despair ourselves if we were to
restore hope in those people who have nothing left them but hope?" With
regard to feminist claims, she says: "Women are crying out that they are
slaves: let them wait until men are free! . . . In the mean time we must
not compromise the future by our impatience with the present. . . . It
is to be feared that vain attempts of this kind and unjustifiable claims
may do harm to what is styled at present the cause of women. There is
no doubt that women have certain rights and that they are suffering
injustice. They ought to lay claim to a better future, to a wise
independence, to a greater participation in knowledge, and to more
respect, interest and esteem from men. This future, though, is in their
own hands."
This is wisdom itself. It would be impossible to put it more clearly,
and to warn women in a better way, that the greatest danger for
their cause would be the triumph of what is called by an ironical
term--feminism.
These retractions, though, have very little effect. There is a certain
piquancy in showing up an author who is in contradiction with himself,
in showing how he refutes his own paradoxes. But these are striking
paradoxes which are not readily forgotten. What I want to show is that
in these first novels by George Sand we have about the whole of
the feminist programme of to-day. Everything is there, the right to
happiness, the necessity of reforming marriage, the institution, in
a more or less near future, of free unions. Our feminists of to-day,
French, English, or Norwegian authoresses, and theoricians like Ellen
Key, with her book on _Love and Marriage_, all these rebels have
invented nothing. They have done nothing but take up once more the
theories of the great feminist of 1832, and expose them with less
lyricism but with more cynicism.
George Sand protested against the accusation of having aimed at
attacking institutions in her feminist novels. She was wrong in
protesting, as it is just this which gives her novels their value
and significance. It is this which dates them and which explains the
enormous force of expansion that they have had. They came just after
the July Revolution, and we must certainly consider them as one of
the results of that. A throne had just been overturned, and, by way of
pastime, churches were being pillaged and an archbishop's palace had
been sackaged. Literature was also attempting an insurrection, by way of
diversion. For a long time it had been feeding the revolutionary ferment
which it had received from romanticism. Romanticism had demanded the
freedom of the individual, and the writers at the head of this movement
were Chateaubriand, Victor Hugo and Dumas. They claimed this freedom
for Rene, for Hermann and for Antony, who were men. An example had been
given, and women meant to take advantage of it. Women now began their
revolution.
Under all these influences, and in the particular atmosphere now
created, the matrimonial mishap of Baronne Dudevant appeared to her
of considerable importance. She exaggerated and magnified it until it
became of social value. Taking this private mishap as her basis, she
puts into each of her heroines something of herself. This explains the
passionate tone of the whole story. And this passion could not fail to
be contagious for the women who read her stories, and who recognized in
the novelist's cause their own cause and the cause of all women.
This, then, is the novelty in George Sand's way of presenting feminist
grievances. She had not invented these grievances. They were already
contained in Madame de Stael's books, and I have not forgotten her.
Delphine and Corinne, though, were women of genius, and presented to
us as such. In order to be pitied by Madame de Stael, it was absolutely
necessary to be a woman of genius. For a woman to be defended by George
Sand, it was only necessary that she should not love her husband, and
this was a much more general thing.
George Sand had brought feminism within the reach of all women. This
is the characteristic of these novels, the eloquence of which cannot be
denied. They are novels for the vulgarization of the feminist theory.
IV
THE ROMANTIC ESCAPADE
THE VENICE ADVENTURE