Indiana (Oxford World's Classics)
Editorial Reviews
From 500 Great Books by Women; review by Erica Bauermeister
Indiana is the first of many novels written by George Sand, a woman whose behavior was often considered more shocking than her writing. Seen as a denouncement of marriage when it was published, the novel is the story of a naive, love-starved woman abused by her much older husband and deceived by a selfish seducer. Indiana and her husband are terribly ill-suited to each other. Indiana's husband believes that "women are made to obey, not to advise;" Indiana is submissive, but "it was the silence and submissiveness of the slave who has made of hatred a virtue and of unhappiness a merit." Her seducer is an eloquent rake; as George Sand comments, "the most honorable of men is he who thinks best and acts best, but the most powerful is he who is best able to talk and write." What takes this novel beyond a simple romance of good women and bad men, however, is George Sand's ability to draw direct analogies between personal behavior and the trends and expectations of politics and society. And when one character advises, "Do not break the chains that bind you to society, respect its laws if they protect you, accept its judgments if they are fair to you: but if some day it calumniates you and spurns you, have pride enough to do without it," the reader is reminded that George Sand knew what she was talking about. -- For great reviews of books for girls, check out Let's Hear It for the Girls: 375 Great Books for Readers 2-14.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Book Description
The first novel that George Sand wrote without a collaborator, this is not only a vivid romance, but also an impassioned plea for change in the inequitable French marriage laws of the time, and for a new view of women. It tells the story of a beautiful and innocent young woman, married at
sixteen to a much older man. She falls in love with her handsome, frivolous neighbor, but discovers too late that his love is quite different from her own. This new translation, the first since 1900, does full justice to the passion and conviction of Sand's writing, and the introduction fully
explores the response to Sand in her own time as well as contemporary feminist treatments.
Indiana (Oxford World's Classics)
Indiana (Oxford World's Classics),George Sand,Naomi Schor,Sylvia Raphael,Oxford University Press, USA,0192837974,Classics,European - French,Fiction,France,Literature - Classics / Criticism,Man-woman relationships,Marriage,Women,Women's Studies - General,19th century fiction,Fiction / Classics,Literature/English | World Literature | France
Books Info:
Recommended Books