Yet, in none of her books did George Sand ever submit any theories as to how such children would be cared for; apparently, such a difficulty never troubled her, since almost all of the children of her books die of some disease, while to one--Jacques--she gives the advice to take his own life, so that his wife may be free to love elsewhere.
Her social theories are marked by an exaltation of sentiment, a weakness, an incoherency in conception, caused by her ardent love for theories and ideas, but which, in her passionate sentiment and her loyal enthusiasm, she always confounds and confuses. From early youth she manifested an immense goodness, a profound tenderness, and a deep compassion for human misery. She rarely became angry, even though she suffered cruelly. Her own law of life and her message to the world was--be good. The only strong element within her, she said, was the need of loving, which manifested itself under the form of tenderness and emotion, devotion and religious ecstasy; and when this faith was shaken, doubt and social disturbances overwhelmed her.
Throughout life her consolation was Nature. "It was half of her genius and the surest of her inspirations." No other French novelist has been able to "express in words the lights and shades, harmonies and contrasts, the magic of sounds, the symphonies of color, the depth and distances of the woods, the infinite movement of the sea and the sky--the interior soul of Nature, that vibrates in everything and everybody." With Lamartine and Michelet, she has best reflected and expressed the dreams and hopes and loves of the first half of the nineteenth century.
George Sand saw Nature, lived in her, sympathized with her, and loved her as did few other French writers; therefore, she showed more memory than pure imagination in her work, for she always found Nature more beautiful in actuality than she could picture her mentally, while other great writers, like Lamartine, saw her less beautiful in reality than in their imagination; hence, they were disappointed in Nature, while for George Sand she was the truest friend. The world will always be interested in her descriptions of Nature, because with Nature she always associated something of human life--a thought or a sentiment; her landscapes belonged to her characters--there is always a soul living in them, for, to George Sand, man and Nature were inseparable.
Thus, every novel of this authoress consists of a situation and a landscape, the poetic union of which nothing can mar. "Man associated with Nature and Nature with man is a great law of art; no painter has practised it with instinct more delicate or sure." Because Nature, in her early youth, was her inspiration, guide, even her God, she returned to her later in life. M. Jules Lemaître wrote that her works will remain eternally beautiful, because they teach us how to love Nature as divine and good, and to find in that love peace and solace. There are many parts of her work which show as detailed, accurate, and realistic descriptions as those by Balzac. She constantly employed two elements--the fanciful and the realistic.
George Sand never studied or knew how to compose a work, how to preserve the unity of the subject or the unity in tone in characters; hence, there was nothing calculated or premeditated--everything was spontaneous. No preparation of plan did she ever think of--a mode of procedure which naturally resulted in a negligent style and caused the composition to drag. Her inspiration seemed to go so far, then she resorted to her imagination, to the chimerical, forcing events and characters. "There are many defects in the style--such as the sentimental part, the romanesque in the violent expression of sentiments or invention of situations, the exaggerated improbabilities of events, the excessive declamation; but how many compensating qualities are there to offset these defects!"
Her method of writing was very simple. It was the love of writing that impelled her, almost without premeditation, to put into words her dreams, meditations, and chimeras under concrete and living forms. Yet, by the largeness of her sympathy and the ardor of her passions, by the abundant inventions of stories, and by the harmonious word-flow, she deserves to be ranked among the greatest writers of France. Her career, taken as a whole, is one of prodigious fecundity--a literary life that has "enchanted by its fictions or troubled by its dreams" four or five generations. Never diminishing in quality or inspiration, there are surprises in every new work.
No doubt George Sand has, for a generation or more, been somewhat forgotten, but what great writer has not shared the same fate? When the materialistic age has passed away, many famous writers of the past will be resurrected, and with them George Sand; for her novels, although written to please and entertain, discuss questions of religion, philosophy, morality, problems of the heart, conscience, and education,--and this is done in such a dramatic way that one feels all to be true. More than that, her characters are all capable of carrying out, to the end, a common moral and general theme with eloquence seldom found in novels.
An interesting comparison might be made between Mme. de Staël and George Sand, the two greatest women writers of France. Both wrote from their experience of life, and fought passionately against the prejudices and restrictions of social conventions; both were ideal natures and were severely tried in the school of life, profiting by their experiences; both possessed highly sensitive natures, and suffered much; both were keenly enthusiastic and sympathetic, with pardonable weaknesses; both lived through tragic wars; both evinced a dislike for the commonplace and strove for greater freedom, but for different publics, after unhappy marriages, both rose up as accusers against the prevalent system of marrying young girls. But Mme. de Staël was a virtuoso in conversation, a salon queen, and her happiness was to be found in society alone; while George Sand found her happiness in communion with Nature. This explains the two natures, their sufferings, their joys, their writings.
The greatest punishment ever inflicted upon Mme. de Staël was her exile, for it deprived her of her social life, a fact of which the emperor was well aware. Her entire literary effort was directed to describing her social life and the relation of society to life. "She belongs to the moralists and to the writers who wrote of society and man--social psychologists." Not poetic or artistic by nature, but with an exceptional power of observation, she shows on every side the influence of a pedagogical, literary, and social training; she was the product of an artificial culture.