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Naked in the Marketplace: The Lives of George Sand
Who was George Sand? She was the first famous Frenchwoman celebrated throughout Europe who wasn't either a saint or a king's mistress. She was also the first woman in Europe to become a best-selling novelist. But her fame is inseparable from her notoriety: the scandal of leaving a husband and child, setting up in Paris with an eighteen-year-old lover, liaisons and friendships with men of talent and even genius: de Musset, Chopin, Balzac, and Flaubert. Politically engaged, Sand was literally, "there at the revolution," those of 1831 and 1848, reporting, analyzing, denouncing, exhorting. She believed always in Progress as she did in Love, though she was doomed to be betrayed in both. Acclaimed literary biographer Benita Eisler sheds new light on the many roles, triumphs, and losses that together constituted Sand's overwhelming presence. With nearly ninety novels, 20,000 letters, and thousands of pages of autobiographical writings and political commentary, how did Sand also have the time to live? As Eisler reveals, hers seems more like several lives--literary, political, amorous, and domestic. Earlier biographers have either flash-frozen Sand into a feminist icon or blurred her in the dynamic of "child of the century," but Naked in the Marketplace presents Sand at her essence--the outsized persona and the inner woman, along with the unique and irreplaceable role she played in the history of her times.
320 pages, Hardcover
First published January 31, 2004
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
June 2, 2015
Honestly, I feel as though I just ran a race to finish this book. It desperately needs to slow down so you can get to really know the characters and their story.
George Sand, Amantine Lucile Aurora Dupin, (1804–1876) was the first woman in Europe to become a best-selling novelist. But not only that, she was able to financially support herself to earn both money and her freedom. But it was her lifestyle of scandalous affairs with men, women and cross dressing which made her a controversial Parisian literary star. She was definitely a workaholic; throughout her life she wrote 90 novels, 20,000 letters, and thousands of pages of autobiographical writings and political commentary (she was "there at the revolution," those of 1831 and 1848, reporting, analyzing, denouncing, exhorting.)
After reading this book, I believe that Sand was always trying to fill the void deep inside. Her mother had emotionally wounded her with her unrequited attachment. As a young girl, her mother mentally abused and neglected by her. Tragically, Sand would act out her insecurities of her childhood onto her daughter Solange. Sand would always put her son first. But repeatedly, she would verbally abused Solange and excluded her from her life. It was an ugly, punitive relationship for both mother and daughter. I would also say that she was a woman who lived multiple lives -- literary, political, amorous, and domestic. The list of lovers is long -- de Musset, Chopin, and Balzac are just a few. And an epistolary friendship with Flaubert. I also wished that the author would have put Sand's quotes or excerpts from any of her writings in this book.
Also after reading this book, I think I will check out Sand's “Indiana,” and “Lelia.” As well as Eisler's O'Keeffe and Stieglitz, Chopin's Funeral and Byron: Child of Passion, Fool of Fame.
George Sand, Amantine Lucile Aurora Dupin, (1804–1876) was the first woman in Europe to become a best-selling novelist. But not only that, she was able to financially support herself to earn both money and her freedom. But it was her lifestyle of scandalous affairs with men, women and cross dressing which made her a controversial Parisian literary star. She was definitely a workaholic; throughout her life she wrote 90 novels, 20,000 letters, and thousands of pages of autobiographical writings and political commentary (she was "there at the revolution," those of 1831 and 1848, reporting, analyzing, denouncing, exhorting.)
After reading this book, I believe that Sand was always trying to fill the void deep inside. Her mother had emotionally wounded her with her unrequited attachment. As a young girl, her mother mentally abused and neglected by her. Tragically, Sand would act out her insecurities of her childhood onto her daughter Solange. Sand would always put her son first. But repeatedly, she would verbally abused Solange and excluded her from her life. It was an ugly, punitive relationship for both mother and daughter. I would also say that she was a woman who lived multiple lives -- literary, political, amorous, and domestic. The list of lovers is long -- de Musset, Chopin, and Balzac are just a few. And an epistolary friendship with Flaubert. I also wished that the author would have put Sand's quotes or excerpts from any of her writings in this book.
Also after reading this book, I think I will check out Sand's “Indiana,” and “Lelia.” As well as Eisler's O'Keeffe and Stieglitz, Chopin's Funeral and Byron: Child of Passion, Fool of Fame.
September 30, 2012
"Naked in the Marketplace" is Henry James's phrase for George Sand's parading of her affair with Alfred de Musset in her fiction. James, needless to say, preferred more discretion in his aesthetic. Sand shocked and titillated her contemporaries even more when she took up with Chopin, a liaison that lasted nearly nine years, during which the composer produced half his works of genius.
Sand's fiction is not much read today, although her letters are now complete in 26 volumes, and yet her life is better recorded than that of any other woman in French history.
So what does Benita Eisler have to add? Mainly a wry wit and a compact narrative — although I was a bit distracted by her penchant for the passive voice. Her book sometimes reads as if it has been translated from the French.
Certain feminists have given Sand a hard time because she was, in Ms. Eisler's terms, an "exceptionalist" — meaning, in Sand's view, it was all right for her to act the part of a man, wearing pants and loving whom she pleased. But women in general ought to stay at home, she thought, and not bother about the right to vote. Sand got a divorce from Casimir Dudevant in 1844 but was against it for other women.
But Sand was hardly alone in rejecting feminism as a movement. Like other exceptional women, she saw herself as sui generis, and "more intelligent, more honest, more self-respecting" than other women. Margaret Fuller and Mary Wollstonecraft thought similarly, Ms. Eisler notes. "Only Sand's talent and success, trumped all the cards against her," she concludes. Why should Sand think that lesser, ordinary women could do the same?
So Sand's fiction, even though it was autobiographical, never included a woman as protean as herself. On the contrary, these women were, like her eponymous heroine, Lélia, frigid — not because of some psychological disorder but because a woman caught in a terrible marriage with an abusive man could not achieve orgasm. Patriarchal power relationships were such that a woman could not freely love, and without that kind of spontaneity in her life, she could not climax.
In an age when pregnancy was referred to by such euphemisms as "lying in," it is no wonder that Sand gave Henry James the vapors. The poor chap used to get enervated when Edith Wharton took him out for excursions in her driving machine. And Sand's contemporaries thought that she hastened Chopin's demise by her vampiric demands on his fragile libido.
Stuff and nonsense, of course. Sand nursed and mothered the invalid Chopin. He was grateful, although he never quite got over his conventional notion that she was a naughty woman.
Ms. Eisler's narrative proceeds so effortlessly that it was not until I had finished her book and began perusing her sparse notes that I began to feel a tad dissatisfied. Why did Sand write so much? Something like 90 novels (it is odd that different biographers come up with different counts), not to mention her memoirs, 20,000 letters, and copious journalism. Why did Sand write so rapidly? A typical day yielded 20 pages. And why didn't she revise?
Ms. Eisler explains that Sand always spent more than she earned, so she was always taking on more writing assignments. And she didn't revise because she didn't really think of herself as an artist — you know, like her friend Flaubert, who agonized over every word, not to mention that finicky perfectionist Chopin, taking the measure of every note.
Well, okay, but plenty of writers go into debt rather than chain themselves to their desks every night like Sand. And it is not only artists who feel the need to revise. And I was still left wondering why Sand always composed in a torrent.
I began to suspect that Ms. Eisler is one of those biographers who does not want her flow interrupted by inconvenient, disturbing questions. Yet some biographers earn their authority by asking the right questions, even when they cannot give definitive answers.
Now I have a confession to make: Many years ago I attended a brilliant talk about George Sand given by Elizabeth Harlan, then a member of a biography seminar at New York University. She published her "George Sand" in 2004 — a fact mentioned once in Ms. Eisler's note (the only one) to chapter 3: "We owe the reconstruction of Sand's discovery and subsequent suppression of evidence relating to her parentage to the archival labors of Elizabeth Harlan."
In other words, although Ms. Eisler does not exactly acknowledge it, much of chapter 3 owes its existence to Ms. Harlan's groundbreaking work. And this "reconstruction," by the way, is not only a matter of research, but rather, in Ms. Harlan's words, a product of the "tug of war between information and intuition."
Ms. Harlan had a hunch that Sand biographers had missed something: "What if, I came to wonder, an unverified but universally accepted assumption about George Sand's identity was placed in doubt?" In short, what if Sand's father was not the aristocrat Maurice Dupin but rather an unknown male who had coupled with Sand's mother Sophie during one of Maurice's absences?
There is no space here to recount how Ms. Harlan proved that Sand knew but covered up the fact that Maurice Dupin was not her biological father. But I second Ms. Eisler's belief that Ms. Harlan has proven her case.
And it matters, because the thrust of Sand's novels were about women who sought to legitimate themselves. At night, in a dreamlike reverie Sand would write these fables emanating from a deep inner hurt: Pages and pages would pour out, even though Sand often suffered pain in her writing arm and even experienced partial paralysis accompanied by periods of "near blindness," Ms. Harlan notes.
Composing at night, alone, gave Sand access to feelings that she could not recall the next day without rereading what she had just written. What was happening to Sand? In a footnote, Ms. Harlan quotes Helen Deutsch's essay on Sand: "There are mental disturbances in which the patient falls into so-called twilight states, in which he experiences things that are normally cordoned off from his conscious life."
Naked in the marketplace indeed! Fiction was not just thinly disguised autobiography for Sand. Fiction represented a kind of primal woman's story, an anchoring of the self in novels not governed by a Napoleonic code that gave women practically no rights.
Where to funnel all that energy — so much that no man could satisfy Sand for long — except in writing, in the font of her own creativity? In "A New History of French Literature" (1989) Naomi Schor suggests that in "Lélia" Sand demonstrated that the "war between the sexes is culturally constructed." Where to escape that construction — even as she wrote about it — other than in her own prose?
No wonder, as Ms. Schor argues, Sand rejected Balzac's realism in favor of her allegorical novels about the terrible choices women confronted.
The end of James's line about Sand and de Musset is that the lovers "perform for the benefit of society." So it seems in Ms. Eisler's account. But it does not in Ms. Harlan's, where Sand, it seems to me, comes into her own.
Sand's fiction is not much read today, although her letters are now complete in 26 volumes, and yet her life is better recorded than that of any other woman in French history.
So what does Benita Eisler have to add? Mainly a wry wit and a compact narrative — although I was a bit distracted by her penchant for the passive voice. Her book sometimes reads as if it has been translated from the French.
Certain feminists have given Sand a hard time because she was, in Ms. Eisler's terms, an "exceptionalist" — meaning, in Sand's view, it was all right for her to act the part of a man, wearing pants and loving whom she pleased. But women in general ought to stay at home, she thought, and not bother about the right to vote. Sand got a divorce from Casimir Dudevant in 1844 but was against it for other women.
But Sand was hardly alone in rejecting feminism as a movement. Like other exceptional women, she saw herself as sui generis, and "more intelligent, more honest, more self-respecting" than other women. Margaret Fuller and Mary Wollstonecraft thought similarly, Ms. Eisler notes. "Only Sand's talent and success, trumped all the cards against her," she concludes. Why should Sand think that lesser, ordinary women could do the same?
So Sand's fiction, even though it was autobiographical, never included a woman as protean as herself. On the contrary, these women were, like her eponymous heroine, Lélia, frigid — not because of some psychological disorder but because a woman caught in a terrible marriage with an abusive man could not achieve orgasm. Patriarchal power relationships were such that a woman could not freely love, and without that kind of spontaneity in her life, she could not climax.
In an age when pregnancy was referred to by such euphemisms as "lying in," it is no wonder that Sand gave Henry James the vapors. The poor chap used to get enervated when Edith Wharton took him out for excursions in her driving machine. And Sand's contemporaries thought that she hastened Chopin's demise by her vampiric demands on his fragile libido.
Stuff and nonsense, of course. Sand nursed and mothered the invalid Chopin. He was grateful, although he never quite got over his conventional notion that she was a naughty woman.
Ms. Eisler's narrative proceeds so effortlessly that it was not until I had finished her book and began perusing her sparse notes that I began to feel a tad dissatisfied. Why did Sand write so much? Something like 90 novels (it is odd that different biographers come up with different counts), not to mention her memoirs, 20,000 letters, and copious journalism. Why did Sand write so rapidly? A typical day yielded 20 pages. And why didn't she revise?
Ms. Eisler explains that Sand always spent more than she earned, so she was always taking on more writing assignments. And she didn't revise because she didn't really think of herself as an artist — you know, like her friend Flaubert, who agonized over every word, not to mention that finicky perfectionist Chopin, taking the measure of every note.
Well, okay, but plenty of writers go into debt rather than chain themselves to their desks every night like Sand. And it is not only artists who feel the need to revise. And I was still left wondering why Sand always composed in a torrent.
I began to suspect that Ms. Eisler is one of those biographers who does not want her flow interrupted by inconvenient, disturbing questions. Yet some biographers earn their authority by asking the right questions, even when they cannot give definitive answers.
Now I have a confession to make: Many years ago I attended a brilliant talk about George Sand given by Elizabeth Harlan, then a member of a biography seminar at New York University. She published her "George Sand" in 2004 — a fact mentioned once in Ms. Eisler's note (the only one) to chapter 3: "We owe the reconstruction of Sand's discovery and subsequent suppression of evidence relating to her parentage to the archival labors of Elizabeth Harlan."
In other words, although Ms. Eisler does not exactly acknowledge it, much of chapter 3 owes its existence to Ms. Harlan's groundbreaking work. And this "reconstruction," by the way, is not only a matter of research, but rather, in Ms. Harlan's words, a product of the "tug of war between information and intuition."
Ms. Harlan had a hunch that Sand biographers had missed something: "What if, I came to wonder, an unverified but universally accepted assumption about George Sand's identity was placed in doubt?" In short, what if Sand's father was not the aristocrat Maurice Dupin but rather an unknown male who had coupled with Sand's mother Sophie during one of Maurice's absences?
There is no space here to recount how Ms. Harlan proved that Sand knew but covered up the fact that Maurice Dupin was not her biological father. But I second Ms. Eisler's belief that Ms. Harlan has proven her case.
And it matters, because the thrust of Sand's novels were about women who sought to legitimate themselves. At night, in a dreamlike reverie Sand would write these fables emanating from a deep inner hurt: Pages and pages would pour out, even though Sand often suffered pain in her writing arm and even experienced partial paralysis accompanied by periods of "near blindness," Ms. Harlan notes.
Composing at night, alone, gave Sand access to feelings that she could not recall the next day without rereading what she had just written. What was happening to Sand? In a footnote, Ms. Harlan quotes Helen Deutsch's essay on Sand: "There are mental disturbances in which the patient falls into so-called twilight states, in which he experiences things that are normally cordoned off from his conscious life."
Naked in the marketplace indeed! Fiction was not just thinly disguised autobiography for Sand. Fiction represented a kind of primal woman's story, an anchoring of the self in novels not governed by a Napoleonic code that gave women practically no rights.
Where to funnel all that energy — so much that no man could satisfy Sand for long — except in writing, in the font of her own creativity? In "A New History of French Literature" (1989) Naomi Schor suggests that in "Lélia" Sand demonstrated that the "war between the sexes is culturally constructed." Where to escape that construction — even as she wrote about it — other than in her own prose?
No wonder, as Ms. Schor argues, Sand rejected Balzac's realism in favor of her allegorical novels about the terrible choices women confronted.
The end of James's line about Sand and de Musset is that the lovers "perform for the benefit of society." So it seems in Ms. Eisler's account. But it does not in Ms. Harlan's, where Sand, it seems to me, comes into her own.
August 27, 2019
It was definitely interesting. Lots of references to her well-known contemporaries.
There are photos of her available on-line and I find it hard to believe she had so many lovers. But, I suppose it's documented by letters. She was not a very good parent.
There are photos of her available on-line and I find it hard to believe she had so many lovers. But, I suppose it's documented by letters. She was not a very good parent.
September 10, 2013
Repeatedly abandoned and emotionally abused by her mother and strictly disciplined by her grandmother who despised her daughter-in-law, is it any wonder that George Sand (born Aurore Dupin) grew up with a deep need to be loved? As the first best-selling female novelist in Europe and a smart business woman, Sand's life was rife with sexual scandals and friction with her own family. She had an inquisitive mind, was an intelligent observer of people but seems to have suffered from stunted emotional development.
It's an interesting glimpse into the woman, what she wrote, how she lived, the people she surrounded herself with, who she really cared for, and her steely character that allowed her to overcome many disappointments. But even her most ardent fan could not call her maternal and she abandoned her children as easily as her own mother abandoned her. She was, in my opinion, cruel to her daughter throughout her childhood and even encouraged her to marry a man her good friend warned her against.
The author provides good summaries of the books she wrote, drawing parallels to events in Sand's own life, but I wish she could have shared more excerpts from letters written to and from Sands.
It's an interesting glimpse into the woman, what she wrote, how she lived, the people she surrounded herself with, who she really cared for, and her steely character that allowed her to overcome many disappointments. But even her most ardent fan could not call her maternal and she abandoned her children as easily as her own mother abandoned her. She was, in my opinion, cruel to her daughter throughout her childhood and even encouraged her to marry a man her good friend warned her against.
The author provides good summaries of the books she wrote, drawing parallels to events in Sand's own life, but I wish she could have shared more excerpts from letters written to and from Sands.
December 11, 2007
Oh, this "hot, slutty" book is a page turner! "Lives" of George Sand (Aurore Dupin Dudevant) is right. This woman became lovers with every man and at least one woman who happened upon her. She created a life of her own and threw her entire story into her writings, hence the title "naked in the marketplace." She bared herself via her autobiographical fiction.
Part of the creative class of early- to mid-1800s Paris, Sand's cast of characters will implore you to make a list of all the other people from this time you want to read about. Incidentally, I was introduced to George Sand in a snippet of Clara Schumann biography. That book indicated that she had Chopin as a love slave in Majorca (I now know that was not exactly true).
Enjoy your time in Paris with this delightful and inspiring group of artists. I think I'm running off with Chopin next.
Part of the creative class of early- to mid-1800s Paris, Sand's cast of characters will implore you to make a list of all the other people from this time you want to read about. Incidentally, I was introduced to George Sand in a snippet of Clara Schumann biography. That book indicated that she had Chopin as a love slave in Majorca (I now know that was not exactly true).
Enjoy your time in Paris with this delightful and inspiring group of artists. I think I'm running off with Chopin next.
January 27, 2019
This was a serviceable bio, but kind of like reading a Wikipedia page (a long one). She was born then she did this then she did that then she married him and then she slept with him him her him him him him. (Yes, the variety of affairs grows tiresome.) I also didn't 'get' her. The author repeatedly says what a mediocre writer she was (certainly not widely read now), not physically attractive, not a good sense of humor, mediocre (at best) mother....it was like a mean ex writing your biography.
June 22, 2010
disappointing--a bit superficial. too much glossed over or skipped in my opinion,but does show us how Sand was abused and neglected by her mother Sophie and did the same to her daughter Solange.
May 31, 2018
Benita Eisler's Naked in the Market Place: The Lives of George Sand is a larger than life portrait of the notorious Aurore Dupin aka George Sand, the famous author, political activist, wife, mother and lover of many during her life. The intensity of the range of her influence was felt by all who entered her orbit. Relationships with de Musset, Chopin, Balzac, Flaubert and others dotted her life with all benefiting from her devotion and devastated when they ended. Beginning with her unusual and chaotic upbringing, including rejection from her mother, George none the less possessed the interior grit of a survivor and managed to thrive. Unfortunately, this unfortunate pattern of a dis-functional relationship with her own daughter Solange played a part in her sense of failure as a mother. The fact that she was able to write nearly 90 novels and twenty-thousand letters and biological pieces is a testament to her creativity and drive. This biography reads like both a novel and a history lesson as the events of the times serve as a backdrop to a vibrant life.
May 31, 2025
I found this book at the San Luis Obispo Library, on sale. it was an interesting summary of George Sand’s life, lovers ( so many!) as well as descriptions of her long list of novels. The era of French history and politics that impacted her work was quite impressive as well as her incredible social circle including every possible artist, musician and writer of that era. The book felt at times like a gossip column listing her many liaisons and difficult family relationships. She seemed to be constantly desperately and intensely in love with someone. Lots of melodrama. It was however worth a read.
August 15, 2013
An interesting work on the life of one of the female novelists of the 19th Century. It is unfortunate that a lot of her letters (both sent and received) were disposed of or lost, but what remained has been used to good effect. George Sand knew several of the artists and writers of her era, some of them much more intimately than others. Her novels came close to being autobiographical with barely disguised characters. Ms. Eisler gives us some literary criticism of a few of Sand's works. She also provides us with information on Sand as a mother. She doted on her son yet treated her daughter much like she had been treated and essentially wrecked the girl's life.
April 18, 2013
A good overview of George Sand. It gives a good picture of the writer, Aurore Dupin, who turned herself into the phenomenon known as George Sand. For someone who knows nothing of her life it is a good, brief introduction. But i found it simplistic and it reads as if it had been written for a "young adult" audience. Easy read, and it served my purpose; I had known nothing of her except Chopin and cigars.
February 24, 2009
Interesting look at Sand's life.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews