[From Bentley's Miscellany.]
THE GENIUS OF GEORGE SAND.
the comedy of françois le champi.
Scarcely half a dozen years have elapsed since it was considered a dangerous experiment to introduce the name of George Sand into an English periodical. In the interval we have overcome our scruples, and the life and writings of George Sand are now as well known in this country as those of Charles Dickens, or Bulwer Lytton. The fact itself is a striking proof of the power of a great intellect to make itself heard in spite of the prejudices and aversion of its audience.
The intellectual power of George Sand is attested by the suffrages of Europe. The use to which she has put it is another question. Unfortunately, she has applied it, for the most part, to so bad a use, that half the people who acknowledge the ascendency of her genius, see too much occasion to deplore its perversion.
The principles she has launched upon the world have an inevitable tendency toward the disorganization of all existing institutions, political and social. This is the broad, palpable fact, let sophistry disguise or evade it as it may. Whether she pours out an intense novel that shall plow up the roots of the domestic system, or composes a proclamation for the Red Republicans that shall throw the streets into a flame, her influence is equally undeniable and equally pernicious.
It has been frequently urged, in the defense of her novels, that they do not assail the institution of marriage, but the wrongs that are perpetrated in its name. Give her the full benefit of her intention, and the result is still the same. Her eloquent expositions of ill-assorted unions—her daring appeals from the obligations they impose, to the affections they outrage—her assertion of the rights of nature over the conventions of society, have the final effect of justifying the violation of duty on the precarious ground of passion and inclination. The bulk of her readers—of all readers—take such social philosophy in the gross; they can not pick out its nice distinctions, and sift its mystical refinements. It is less a matter of reasoning than of feeling. Their sensibility, and not their judgment, is invoked. It is not to their understanding that these rhapsodies are addressed, but to their will and their passions. A writer who really meant to vindicate an institution against its abuses, would adopt a widely different course; and it is only begging George Sand out of the hands of the jury to assert that the intention of her writings is opposed to their effect, which is to sap the foundations upon which the fabric of domestic life reposes.
Her practice accords harmoniously with her doctrines. Nobody who knows what the actual life of George Sand has been, can doubt for a moment the true nature of her opinions on the subject of marriage. It is not a pleasant subject to touch, and we should shrink from it, if it were not as notorious as every thing else by which she has become famous in her time. It forms, in reality, as much a part of the philosophy she desires to impress upon the world, as the books through which she has expounded her theory. It is neither more nor less than her theory of freedom and independence in the matter of passion (we dare not dignify it by any higher name) put into action—rather vagrant action, we fear, but, on that account, all the more decisive. The wonder is, how any body, however ardent an admirer of George Sand's genius, can suppose for a moment that a woman who leads this life from choice, and who carries its excesses to an extremity of voluptuous caprice, could by any human possibility pass so completely out of herself into another person in her books. The supposition is not only absurd in itself, but utterly inconsistent with the boldness and sincerity of her character.
Some sort of justification for the career of Madame Dudevant has been attempted to be extracted from the alleged unhappiness of her married life, which drove her at last to break the bond, and purchase her liberty at the sacrifice of a large portion of her fortune, originally considerable. But all such justifications must be accepted with hesitation in the absence of authentic data, and more especially when subsequent circumstances are of a nature to throw suspicion upon the defense. Cases undoubtedly occur in which the violent disruption of domestic ties may be extenuated even upon moral grounds; but we can not comprehend by what process of reasoning the argument can be stretched so as to cover any indiscretions that take place afterward.
Madame Dudevant was married in 1822, her husband is represented as a plain country gentleman, very upright and literal in his way, and quite incapable, as may readily be supposed, of sympathizing with what one of her ablest critics calls her "aspirations toward the infinite, art and liberty." She bore him two children, lived with him eight years, and, shortly after the insurrection of July, 1830, fled from her dull house at Nohant, and went up to Paris. Upon this step nobody has a right, to pronounce judgment. Nor should the world penetrate the recesses of her private life from that day forward, if her life could be truly considered private, and if it were not in fact and in reality a part and parcel of her literary career. She has made so little scruple about publishing it herself, that nobody else need have any such scruple on that head. She has been interwoven in such close intimacies with a succession of the most celebrated persons, and has acted upon all occasions so openly, that there is not the slightest disguise upon the matter in the literary circles of Paris. But even all this publicity might not wholly warrant a reference to the erratic course of this extraordinary woman, if she had not made her own experiences, to some extent, the basis of her works, which are said by those most familiar with her habits and associations, to contain, in a variety of forms, the confession of the strange vicissitudes through which her heart and imagination have passed. The reflection is not limited to general types of human character and passion, but constantly descends to individualization; and her intimate friends are at no loss to trace through her numerous productions a whole gallery of portraits, beginning with poor M. Dudevant, and running through a remarkable group of contemporary celebrities. Her works then are, avowedly, transcripts of her life; and her life consequently becomes, in a grave sense, literary property, as the spring from whence has issued the turbid principles she glories in enunciating.