Présence du roman gothique anglais dans les premiers romans de George Sand by Marilyn Mallia

Abstract

Reviewed by: Présence du roman gothique anglais dans les premiers romans de George Sand by Marilyn Mallia Tessa Nunn Mallia, Marilyn. Présence du roman gothique anglais dans les premiers romans de George Sand. Classiques Garnier, 2018. Pp 281. ISBN: 978-2-406-07451-9. 36€ (paper). George Sand's appropriation and reworking of the English Gothic novel constitute a series of techniques that the novelist employed to expose social issues and propose solutions corresponding to her ideals. Marilyn Mallia's monograph Présence du roman gothique anglais dans les premiers romans de George Sand investigates how Sand's use of gothic devices shaped her novels published between 1832 and 1843, which, in consequence, gave a breath of fresh air to the waning gothic genre. In a similar vein as Anne Radcliffe, Sand manipulates the Gothic genre to reveal and critique structural misogyny. Mallia examines how Sand reworked three aspects of the Gothic novel—the double, the Gothic journey, and the Gothic denouement of marriage or death—to engage with political issues and create autonomous female characters who struggle toward a legitimate position in society. Recognizing certain Gothic devices supporting a standstill in women's liberation from ideological constraints, Mallia is careful to avoid exaggerating the feminist (avant la lettre) traits in Sand's novels. Shining light on the social construction of antipodal excesses, the Gothic double or doppelganger allowed Sand to explore multiple facets constituting femininity, to create situations impossible for women under the Napoleonic Code, and to advocate for transgressive passions. In the novels Mallia studies, exceptionally ethereal or intransigent heroines never succeed in obtaining their objectives, thereby revealing the novelist's conception of a harmonious ideal of intelligent, active, sensual women. Physical and geographical mobility are paramount for the heroines of Sand's early novels. Whereas numerous scholars have examined the Gothic sites in Sand's oeuvre, Mallia focuses on the Gothic nature of the protagonists' itineraries. Following Isabelle Naginski's lead, Mallia demonstrates how Sand combined generic markers of the rite-of-passage novel and the Gothic novel, particularly in Consuelo, through the obstacles overcome during formative journeys. These peripatetic quests for freedom or the power to act favor situations for Sand's [End Page 226] heroines to take on mentally and physically active roles in their trajectories, often allowing them to save themselves instead of withering as passive victims. Furthermore, the parallel transformative expeditions completed by the hero and heroine, which Mallia analyzes in Mauprat, Consuelo and La Comtesse de Rudolstadt, suggest the possibility of egalitarian, collaborative relations between the two sexes. In contrast, female isolation in Sand's earlier novels, Indiana and Lélia, endows the title characters with less power to act. Mallia not only successfully demonstrates the ideological implications of Sandian peregrinations but also puts them in dialogue with those in English Gothic novels. The challenge of negotiating the Gothic denouement provided Sand with an optimal space for interrogating restrictions on women and proposing alternative conditions. In Sand's novels as well as in English Gothic novels, particularly Radcliffe's, the heroines' and anti-heroines' adventures conclude either in marriage or, as is often the case for transgressive or passive protagonists, in punishment. Sand's early novels do not detail definitive solutions; rather, through seemingly utopic or dystopic endings, the novels instigate debates aimed at ameliorating social and political problems. This final point which Mallia emphasizes is central for understanding Sandian idealism. In addition to investigating Sand's generic innovations, Mallia seeks to expand the notion of rewriting in the Gothic genre's Anglo-European dialogues. She argues that Sand enriched this exchange by weaving together Romantic and Gothic elements to create an experimental, hybrid genre. Making an important contribution to Romanticism studies, Mallia demonstrates how Sand used the Gothic genre, in particular the Radcliffian heroine or anti-heroine, to reappropriate the androcentric French Romantic novel as Sand's female protagonists display Romantic sensibilities and struggle with the mal du siècle. Mallia identifies a genealogy among the characters present in Sand's novels, the English Gothic, and Romanticism revealing the generic influences on Sand's work as well as her contributions to expanding the possibilities of both Romanticism and the...