George Sand

In Our Time

BBC

History

4.6 • 9.2K Ratings

🗓️ 6 February 2020

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the works and life of one of the most popular writers in Europe in C19th, Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin (1804-1876) who wrote under the name George Sand. When she wrote her first novel under that name, she referred to herself as a man. This was in Indiana (1832), which had the main character breaking away from her unhappy marriage. It made an immediate impact as it overturned the social conventions of the time and it drew on her own early marriage to an older man, Casimir Dudevant. Once Sand's identity was widely known, her works became extremely popular in French and in translation, particularly her rural novels, outselling Hugo and Balzac in Britain, perhaps buoyed by an interest in her personal life, as well as by her ideas on the rights and education of women and strength of her writing. With Belinda Jack Fellow and Tutor in French at Christ Church, University of Oxford Angela Ryan Senior Lecturer in French at University College Cork And Nigel Harkness Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Humanities and Social Sciences and Professor of French at Newcastle University Producer: Simon Tillotson

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.
0:05.0	Thanks for downloading this episode of In Our Time.
0:07.6	There's a reading list to go with it on our website and you can get news about our
0:10.9	programs if you follow us on Twitter at BBC In Our Time.
0:14.9	I hope you enjoyed the programs.
0:17.0	Hello, George Saund, 1804 to 1876, was one of the most popular and celebrated French
0:22.3	novelists in the 19th century and she defined conventions.
0:26.1	She wrote on Romance Name, she could rest like a man and she lived with the freedom that
0:29.8	only men had in France and she wished other women could share her freedom.
0:34.6	If her characters respected each other as equals, they could overcome differences in age,
0:39.1	wealth or class and fine happiness in love.
0:41.2	If not, they faced the misery she'd escaped in her own marriage and which she saw in so
0:45.5	many others.
0:46.8	We'd been to discuss George Saund, our Angela Ryan, senior lecturer in French at University
0:51.6	College Cork, Nigel Hartness, Provost Charles Slaff, Humanities and Social Sciences
0:56.6	and Professor of French and Eucastical University and Belinda Jack, Pello and Tudor in French
1:01.6	at Christchurch University of Oxford.
1:04.4	Belinda Jack, what was her family background?
1:08.2	Well her family background was very mixed and really very interesting.
1:13.6	On her father's side she was aristocratic with links to the royal family, the French
1:20.4	kings, mostly through illegitimate connections.
1:25.2	On her mother's side, her mother was working class.
	...

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