"Une voiture peut en cacher une autre": Twentieth-Century Women Writers Read George Sand

Abstract

The francophile writer Edith Wharton spent no small amount of time motoring around France in the early twentieth century. As the equally francophile writer Julian Barnes informs us, Wharton also had a habit of naming her cars after French writers. One summer when Wharton had been reading a biography of George Sand, she had not one, but two cars: had a car which always started off brilliantly and then broke down at the first hill, and this we christened 'Alfred de Musset,' while the small but indefatigable motor which subsequently replaced 'Alfred' was naturally named 'George.' As is often the case in literary history, the large and showy seems at first brilliant and gets all the attention, but, as the road