Nineteenth-Century Women for Twentieth-Century Teenagers: A Review of Recent Biographies of George Sand and Mary Shelley

Abstract

Nineteenth-Century Women for Twentieth-Century Teenagers:A Review of Recent Biographies of George Sand and Mary Shelley Carol Albanese-Bay (bio) Adolescents enjoy biographies. This is not a casual remark. Having recently assigned "any approved library book" as extracurricular reading to my Basic Competency freshman English class, I was surprised to observe the large percentage of biography fans. These academically unsophisticated students would rather read the lives of such literary figures as Edgar Allan Poe than some of the most hip, street-wise junior novels on the market. Why? (I queried too.) Because they just like to read about "real people." Two recent biographies written specifically for adolescents in search of "real people" are Tamara Hovey's A Mind of Her Own: A Life of the Writer George Sand, Harper & Row, 1977; and Janet Harris's The Woman Who Created Frankenstein: A Portrait of Mary Shelley, Harper & Row, 1979. While both lives have as their subjects extraordinary nineteenth-century women writers, only Shelley has the appeal of a well-known work to recommend her to adolescents. Yet beyond prediction, since all is in practice rather than promise, Hovey's work comes to life while Harris's does not. Harris relies primarily upon the horrific attraction of Frankenstein to seduce and hold her audience, weaving her biographical narrative in and out. Hovey uses a different approach. In Hovey's biography, George Sand is, herself, the attraction. Having no literary gimmick upon which to depend, Hovey artfully conspires to create of Sand a very real "real person." An examination of Hovey's success and Harris's failure reveals both the possibilities and the limitations of the adolescent biography as a literary form. Tamara Hovey's subject, George Sand, nee Aurore Dupin, was a brilliant nineteenth-century woman of letters, as famous in her times for her outrageous manner of dress and for her egregious [End Page 54] moral behavior as she was for her literary work. Born in Paris in 1804, Sand was raised and educated in times slightly more fortunate for women than a century before. French philosophers and politicians such as Denis Diderot and Marquis de Condorcet had spoken out on women's issues as early as 1762, and scores of men and women had written essays of feminist argument even a century earlier, but the first half of the nineteenth century remained of guarded hospitality to intellectual women. And George Sand was most certainly an intellectual woman. Born of a proletarian mother and an aristocratic, military father, Sand endured a childhood of schizophrenic contrast and emotional tumult. Her mother, Sophie, was constantly at odds with her grandmother, Madame Dupin de Francueil, a woman inordinately competitive for Sand's affections. When Sand's father, Maurice Dupin, died an untimely death, Madame Dupin offered graciously to take over the financial and moral responsibilities of supporting and educating Sand, but at the price that Sophie abjure all claims to her daughter. Sophie had little choice. Barely able to support herself on her wages as a seamstress, she surrendered custody of her child to Madame Dupin. In the years between the ages of four and fourteen, Sand was treated by her grandmother to a classical education with a private tutor, and she treated herself to jaunts in the countryside near Madame Dupin's estate at Nohant, France. Sand's naughty, adventuresome side inspired escapades with the local peasantry. Tomboyish and ungovernable, she did not develop in the lady-like way her grandmother had intended. She roved the fields as a child, created characters, novels and plays throughout her adolescence, and, at the age of fourteen, apparently to sober her somewhat, she was sent off for two and half years to complete her education at a convent. There she became a ring-leader among the convent girls, winning their respect and admiration both for her intellectual creativity and for her cleverness in amicably bending the strict convent rules. Sand might have stayed there longer, but her grandmother was getting on in years and wanted to see her married before her own death. [End Page 55] By the time she left her convent life at the age of sixteen, Sand had gained sufficient experience...