3 - George Sand

Summary

George Sand’s novels did much to shape the sensibilities of the young people who welcomed the February Revolution. During March and April, she helped prepare the election of a Constituent Assembly by writing “Bulletins” published by the Interior Minister Ledru-Rollin. Her voluminous correspondence illustrates vividly the enthusiasm of many romantic writers during the first weeks of the revolution. Her rejection of the proposal by feminist journalists that she stand for election opens a window on divisions among feminists in 1848. But for our purposes, Sand’s primary importance lies in the way her correspondence illustrates both the flowering of the cult of “the people” in the spring of 1848 and the causes of the disillusionment that set in early. After May 15 Sand ceased to believe that the people were capable of governing themselves. Her relations with the worker-poet Charles Poncy are considered at length because they can stand as an epitome of both the success and the failure of Sand’s attempts to get close to “the people.” While much of the scholarly literature stresses Sand’s lifelong adherence to “the principles of 1848,” I argue that there was little left after 1848 of the ideals that she had brought to the February Revolution.