Women of Modern France

by Hugo P. Thieme

Mme. de Staël had an indestructible faith in human reason, liberty, and justice; she believed in human perfection and in the hope of progress. "From Rousseau, she received that passionate tenderness, that confidence in the inherent goodness of man. Believing in an intimate communion of man with God, her religion was spirit and sentiment which had no need of pomp or symbols, of an intermediary between God and man." She was not so much a great writer as she was a great thinker, or rather a discoverer of new thoughts. By instituting a new criticism and by opening new literatures to the French, she succeeded in emancipating art from fixed rules and in facilitating the sudden growth of romanticism in France.

In her life, her great desire was to spread happiness and to obtain it, to love and to be loved in return. In politics it was always the sentiment of justice which appealed to her, in literature it was the ideal. Sincerity was manifested in everything she said and did. Pity for the misery of her fellow beings, the sentiment of the dignity of man and his right to independence, of his future grandeur founded on his moral elevation, the cult of justice, and the love of liberty—such were the prevailing thoughts of her life and works.

Mme. de Staël's chief influence will always remain in the domain of literature; she was the first French writer to introduce and exercise a European or cosmopolitan influence by uniting the literatures of the north and the south and clearly defining the distinction between them. By the expression of her idea that French literature had decayed on account of the exclusive social spirit, and that its only means of regeneration lay in the study and absorption of new models, she cut French taste loose from traditions and freed literature from superannuated conventionalities. Also, by her idea that a common civilization must be fostered, a union of the eastern and western ideals, and that literature must be the common expression thereof, whose object must be the amelioration of humanity, morally and religiously, she gave to the world at large ideas which are only now being fully appreciated and nearing realization. In her novels she vigorously protested against the lot of woman in modern society, against her obligation to submit everything to opinion, against the innumerable obstacles in the way of her development—thus heralding George Sand and the general movement toward woman's emancipation. France has never had a more forceful, energetic, influential, cosmopolitan, and at the same time moral, writer than Mme. de Staël.

The events in the life of George Sand had comparatively little influence upon her works, which were mainly the expression of her nature. As a young girl, she was strongly influenced by her mother, an amiable but rather frivolous woman, and by her grandmother, a serious, cold, ceremonious old lady. Calm and well balanced, and possessing an ardent imagination, she followed her own inclinations when, as a girl of sixteen, she was married to a man for whom she had no love. After living an indifferent sort of life with her husband for ten years, they separated; and she, with her children, went to Paris to find work.

After a number of unsuccessful efforts of a literary nature, she wrote Indiana, which immediately made her success. Her articles were sought by the journals, and from about 1830 her life was that of the average artist and writer of the time. Her relations with Chopin and Alfred de Musset are too well known to require repetition. After 1850 she retired to her home, the Château de Nohant, where she enjoyed the companionship of her son, her daughter-in-law, and her grandchildren; she died there in 1876.

To appreciate her works, it is more important to study her nature than her career. This has been admirably done by the Comte d'Haussonville. George Sand is said to have possessed a dual nature, which seemed to contradict itself, but which explains her works—a dreamy and meditative, and a lively, frolicsome nature; the first might throw light upon her religious crisis, the second, upon her social side. The combination of these two phases caused the numerous conflicts of opinions and doctrines, extending her knowledge and inciting her curiosity; the not infrequent result was an intellectual and moral bewilderment and the deepest melancholy, from which she with great difficulty freed herself. Because of these peculiarities she was constantly agitated, her strongly reflective nature keeping her awake to all important questions of the day.

Her intellectual development may be traced in her works, which, from 1830 to 1840, were personal, lyrical, spontaneous—a direct flow from inspiration, issuing from a common source of emotions and personal sorrows, being the expressions of her habitual reflections, of her moral agitations, of her real and imaginary sufferings. These first works were a protest against the tyranny of marriage, and expressed her conception of a woman in love—a love profound and naïve, exalted and sincere, passionate and chaste: such is pictured in Indiana. In Valentine she portrays the impious and unfortunate marriage that the sacrilegious conventions of the world have imposed, and the results issuing therefrom. In all of these early works are seen an inventiveness, a lively allure, an exquisite style, a freshness and brilliancy, finesse and grace; but they show an undisciplined talent, giving vent to feelings that her unbounded enthusiasm would not allow to be checked—there is emotion, but no system.

In her second period, from about 1840 to 1848, her reflection and emotion combined produced a system and theories. The higher problems took stronger hold on her as she matured; philosophy and religious science in their deeper phases excited her emotive faculties, which threw out a mere echo of what she had heard and studied. Her inspiration thus came from without, throwing out those endless declamatory outbursts which we meet in Consuelo and in Comtesse de Rudolstadt. These theory-novels were soon followed by novels dealing with social problems, now and then relieved by delightful idyllics such as La Mare au Diable and François le Champi. This third tendency M. d'Haussonville considers the least successful.