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ISIDORA
George Sand a quarante-deux ans quand elle écrit Isidora. Ce roman de la maturité est l’un des moins connus de son œuvre, alors que, tant par sa composition que par son thème, il est particulièrement moderne et original. Il y a Julie l’ange et Isidora le démon. Jacques ne sait choisir entre l’une et l’autre jusqu’au jour où il découvre que Julie la vertueuse et Isidora la courtisane ne sont qu’une seule personne : reine et esclave, camélia blanc et rose enivrante, patricienne vêtue d’hermine, domino masqué de noir.« La femme est-elle ou n’est-elle pas l’égale de l’homme dans les desseins, dans la pensée de Dieu ?… L’espèce humaine est-elle composée de deux êtres différents, l’homme et la femme ?… Comment régler les rapports de l’homme et de la femme dans la société, dans la famille, dans la politique ? »« Elle répare tout le mal que l’autre a fait, et par-dessus le marché, elle lui pardonne ce que l’autre, agitée de remords, ne pouvait plus se pardonner à elle-même… » G.S.
237 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1988
About the author
George Sand
2,999 books957 followersAmantine Lucile Aurore Dupin de Francueil, best known by her pen name George Sand, was a French novelist, memoirist and journalist. One of the most popular writers in Europe in her lifetime, being more renowned than either Victor Hugo or Honoré de Balzac in England in the 1830s and 1840s, Sand is recognised as one of the most notable writers of the European Romantic era. She wrote more than 50 volumes of various works to her credit, including tales, plays and political texts, alongside her 70 novels.
Like her great-grandmother, Louise Dupin, whom she admired, George Sand advocated for women's rights and passion, criticized the institution of marriage, and fought against the prejudices of a conservative society. She was considered scandalous because of her turbulent love life, her adoption of masculine clothing, and her masculine pseudonym.
Like her great-grandmother, Louise Dupin, whom she admired, George Sand advocated for women's rights and passion, criticized the institution of marriage, and fought against the prejudices of a conservative society. She was considered scandalous because of her turbulent love life, her adoption of masculine clothing, and her masculine pseudonym.
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March 8, 2020
This is the original Dame aux Camelias! Not the one written later by Alexandre Dumas-son who had read Sand's Isidora, nor Verdi's La Traviata, no! Here we have the real Dame aux Camelias, thought and written by a woman: George Sand.
What's the difference?
A woman's view of women.
Does it matter?
Oh yes it does!
Why is it important?
Because who can understand a woman better than another woman? In Isodora, George Sand makes his character Jacques say: 'I think Isodora knows a lot more about women than I do.'
Personally, I'm sure she does!
George Sand is breaking every code created by men for millennia. In Isodora, she shows that women cannot be divided into two categories:
the pure woman who is either the virgin daughter or the mother and wife,
the impure woman who is either the courtesan or the free woman,
as denounced by Naomi McDougall Jones in The Wrong Kind of Women: Dismantling the Gods of Hollywood, in 2020, 180 years later!
Isidora begins with the questions that Jacques, one of the three characters in the book, asks himself. Jacques would like to answer questions that have never been asked before, such as:
A woman is she or is she not the equal of man in the mind of God?
But Jacques immediately rephrases his question:
Is the human species composed of two different beings, man and woman?
This is also the question asked by Germaine Greer in The Female Eunuch in 1973, 130 years later!
George Sand would like to be able to "regulate the relationship between men and women in society, in the family, in politics." By the way, her character Jacques scratches authors, utopians, metaphysicians and poets, all men who have cavalierly and nimbly resolved this problem by placing women either too high or too low. Another question from Jacques, alias Sand:
What will be the education of children in the ideal Republic?
That is to say, to whom will this education be entrusted? to the man, to the woman, to society? from what age? until what age?
Jacques continues to ask himself:
"It is agreed to say that women have less capacity than men... it's a very controversial point. What do we know about it? Their education diverts them from serious studies, our prejudices forbid them... Add that we have examples of the opposite. What divine logic would have presided over the creation of a being so necessary to man, so capable of governing and yet so inferior to him?"
So many questions...
In George Sand's century, courtesans could sometimes be regenerated by a man's love: they became wise wives, they were back on the straight and narrow. A man's love washed away their sins; their conduct as repentant women unto death made them almost respectable women. Thus the Dame aux Camelias by Alexander Dumas-son and Verdi's Violette’s Traviata save their souls with the help of a man.
George Sand's Isidora will not be saved by a man, but by the friendship of another woman. If she is to be saved at all... because George Sand, a woman, understands all the Isidoras of this world, understands that their trade as courtesans is largely due to the way a men's society works.
In this society, how Alice, the young widow married early to a wicked husband and Isidora, a double character half angel half demon, will walk towards each other, understand each other. Between the two of them, poor James, eager to savour a demon, but dreaming of an angel, will have a hard time understanding women. Yet women are not mysterious beings. One would only have to listen to them tell their own stories to finally understand and love them as they are.
O modern, intelligent, farsighted George Sand!
Long before the feminists of the 20th century, long before the admirable women who are still trying, in the 21st century, to achieve equality between women and men, such as the brilliant women of THE 51 FUND , a production company of films written and directed by women, you, George Sand, have never ceased to make men open their eyes to what women are: diverse and varied humans, with their qualities and faults. Women whose stories we've killed since the dawn of time. Women who have the ability to be friends and not always rivals as men would have them believe. Women who can support each other.
What's the difference?
A woman's view of women.
Does it matter?
Oh yes it does!
Why is it important?
Because who can understand a woman better than another woman? In Isodora, George Sand makes his character Jacques say: 'I think Isodora knows a lot more about women than I do.'
Personally, I'm sure she does!
George Sand is breaking every code created by men for millennia. In Isodora, she shows that women cannot be divided into two categories:
the pure woman who is either the virgin daughter or the mother and wife,
the impure woman who is either the courtesan or the free woman,
as denounced by Naomi McDougall Jones in The Wrong Kind of Women: Dismantling the Gods of Hollywood, in 2020, 180 years later!
Isidora begins with the questions that Jacques, one of the three characters in the book, asks himself. Jacques would like to answer questions that have never been asked before, such as:
A woman is she or is she not the equal of man in the mind of God?
But Jacques immediately rephrases his question:
Is the human species composed of two different beings, man and woman?
This is also the question asked by Germaine Greer in The Female Eunuch in 1973, 130 years later!
George Sand would like to be able to "regulate the relationship between men and women in society, in the family, in politics." By the way, her character Jacques scratches authors, utopians, metaphysicians and poets, all men who have cavalierly and nimbly resolved this problem by placing women either too high or too low. Another question from Jacques, alias Sand:
What will be the education of children in the ideal Republic?
That is to say, to whom will this education be entrusted? to the man, to the woman, to society? from what age? until what age?
Jacques continues to ask himself:
"It is agreed to say that women have less capacity than men... it's a very controversial point. What do we know about it? Their education diverts them from serious studies, our prejudices forbid them... Add that we have examples of the opposite. What divine logic would have presided over the creation of a being so necessary to man, so capable of governing and yet so inferior to him?"
So many questions...
In George Sand's century, courtesans could sometimes be regenerated by a man's love: they became wise wives, they were back on the straight and narrow. A man's love washed away their sins; their conduct as repentant women unto death made them almost respectable women. Thus the Dame aux Camelias by Alexander Dumas-son and Verdi's Violette’s Traviata save their souls with the help of a man.
George Sand's Isidora will not be saved by a man, but by the friendship of another woman. If she is to be saved at all... because George Sand, a woman, understands all the Isidoras of this world, understands that their trade as courtesans is largely due to the way a men's society works.
In this society, how Alice, the young widow married early to a wicked husband and Isidora, a double character half angel half demon, will walk towards each other, understand each other. Between the two of them, poor James, eager to savour a demon, but dreaming of an angel, will have a hard time understanding women. Yet women are not mysterious beings. One would only have to listen to them tell their own stories to finally understand and love them as they are.
O modern, intelligent, farsighted George Sand!
Long before the feminists of the 20th century, long before the admirable women who are still trying, in the 21st century, to achieve equality between women and men, such as the brilliant women of THE 51 FUND , a production company of films written and directed by women, you, George Sand, have never ceased to make men open their eyes to what women are: diverse and varied humans, with their qualities and faults. Women whose stories we've killed since the dawn of time. Women who have the ability to be friends and not always rivals as men would have them believe. Women who can support each other.
October 29, 2021
une prose toujours aussi belle et soutenue, des passages plus qu'intéressants sur la condition des femmes (sur la vieillesse, la vertu, la quête d'amour et d'attention masculine...), un récit attendrissant bien qu'étrangement structuré : la tentative, sans cesse renouvelée chez Sand, de donner à la fiction les apparences de la réalité mène ici à une sorte de patchwork où extraits de journaux, récit et lettres se côtoient, donnant au roman une multitude de points de vue qui ne m'a pas énormément plue. et c'est, évidemment, la première partie du roman, celle qui s'intéresse à Isidora jeune, volage et passionnée, qui m'a parue la plus intéressante et la plus riche : les deux dernières parties du roman se veulent plus "sages", et ne donnent finalement à la femme qu'une seule issue pour son bonheur, celle d'une accalmie vertueuse bien moins "anticonformiste" que Sand veut nous le faire croire (comme par hasard, le libertinage d'Isidora la rend malheureuse, tandis qu'une vie retirée du mondain et dénuée de réel plaisir est ce qui la comble d'un bonheur tristement rangé...). cette vieillesse sage à laquelle aspirent Alice et Isidora n'est-elle pas en réalité qu'une forme de résignation face aux attentes masculines toujours plus moralisatrices ?
February 5, 2026
The plight and pathos of the French courtesan is a common topic in literature, well known in such pathetic portraits as Zola's 1880 Nana. A typical theme in such stories hints that such women come to a bad end because of divine retribution, karma, or more realistically, because they are victims of a corrupt and misogynistic society. Less common, however, has been a novelist's follow-through on the actions and thoughts of the aging courtesan who leaves her lifestyle behind and goes on to a rewarding and mellow life of service, study, bonding with other, women, satisfaction, and repose—all with no sense of penitence or shame . . . and no men.
The courtesan was not a typical focus of George Sand’s novels. By the second decade of her long 19th-century career, at which point she had been labeled an "anti-matrimonial novelist" during the 1830s for such works as Indiana (1832), Valentine (1832), Jacques (1834), and the two different versions of Lélia (1833 and 1839), Sand was ready with Isidora in 1845, to look beyond the scenario of the typical marriage of her day that brought only sorrow and tragedy to women. She suggests instead that a woman can achieve fulfillment and self-actualization if she simply abandons the option of marriage or another liaison with a man, lives happily on her own, and learns to relish solitude and domestic arts, and adoptive motherhood. Most important of all, it is Isidora's bonds of friendship with other women that truly bolster her contentment and self-acceptance.
Early in the Sand's 1845 novel, it is revealed that the title character is really two personae: Isidora, an infamous and sought-after courtesan, who escaped from an unhappy youth into the only source of independence she thought she could achieve, and Julie, her given name, and the embodiment of her true romantic and dreamy self.
At the novel's beginning, Isidora is in her early forties and living with a wealthy, older man. However, it is by the second name that Jacques, the young hero who narrates part of the story, first knows her. He immediately associates her with the heroine of the same name in Rousseau's La Nouvelle Héloïse. Isidora herself admires Rousseau, but laments to Jacques of the respected writers lack of understanding of women. "Il n'a pas compris les femmes, ce sublime Rousseau . . . Il n'a pas su, malgré sa bonne volonté, et ses bonnes intentions, en faire autre chose que des êtres secondaires dans la société.
Despite this perception of Rousseau's shortcomings and injustices toward women, Isidora keeps her sentimental, Rousseauistic ideals alive long enough to fall in love with Jacques, a scholar some 10 years her junior. Nevertheless, Isidora is sufficiently far-sighted to realize that Jacques would only expect her to become his ideal "Julie,” which would lead her to dependent and inferior position. "Oh! toujours l'orgueil et la domination de l'homme! Il n'y a donc pas un instant d'ivresse où l'on puisse se réfugier contre les exigences d'un contrat?" She leaves Jacques to travel to Italy with her aging lover, and later marries the older man on his deathbed.
Three years later, as a wealthy widow, she meets Jacques again, and her old feelings are revived. But Isidora is perceptive enough to realize that her late husband's widowed younger sister, Alice, is really Jacques's soul mate. Isidora again voluntarily travels away and leaves the two young people to pursue their love. Isidora quickly ceases to see her lovely, 25-year-old sister-in-law as a rival, and the two bond through correspondence in letters, and this friendship will be instrumental in her reformation.
In her preface to the 1990 reprinted version of Isidora, Eve Souriane states, "Avec George Sand, la réhabilitation de la femme se fera par la femme et sans humiliation. C'est Alice, la belle-sœur d'Isidora, qui sera l'instrument de cette réhabilitation. L'amitié des deux femmes se développe au cours du roman malgré les protagonistes masculins."2 Certainly, a man could not be the catalyst for the courtesan's break with the past. "George Sand avait compris que la réhabilitation de la courtisane ne pouvait se faire par l'amour d'un homme, que c'était là une conception masculine finissant par l'humiliation de la femme" (Souriane 15).
Typical of Sand's novels, Isidora contains—ironically, through Jacques's writings as well as through Isidora's—troubling questions about women's illogical inequality to men in 1840s French society, the lack of decent education for women, and the fact that women have to lose their virtue to gain any measure of power. In one of his cahiers quoted in the novel's first section, Jacques states, " . . la question des femmes est à peu près résolue pour moi. Êtres admirables et divins, vous ne pouvez grandir que dans la vertu, et vous abjurez votre force en perdant la sainte pudeur" (55).
Although Isidora herself has a horror of fellow courtesans who never seek after love, but only for money, she bemoans the plight of kept women everywhere, who are intelligent and sensitive, but dying of sorrow amid lives of opulence and frivolity that they feel that had to accept. "Mais le plus grand malheur qui puisse échoir à une femme comme moi, c'est de n'être plus stupide. Une courtesane intelligente, douée d'un esprit sérieux et d'un cœur aimant! mais c'est un monstruosité!" (128-29).
One would assume at this point, that Isidora might well follow the path of Sand's earlier novels, and conclude with the protagonist sinking into despair and eventual death, but this is not to be. Two heroines triumph in Isidora . First, although the narrator tells little about what happened to Jacques after he and Isidora parted, the correspondence between Isidora and Alice suggests that, 10 years later, Alice and Jacques are still together and happy.
A reunion between Isidora and Alice is an emotional one as Isidora rapturizes about the value of a female friend. "Une femme, disait-elle avec une sorte d'égarement, une amie, un ange, . . . j'en mourrai de bonheur, mais je serai sauvée" (96).
Sourian notes that Sand's originality in Isidora is that she breaks with Romantic tradition by creating a courtesan who is regenerated not by a man, but by a woman. "Mais dans tous les cas la société oppressive et répressive finissait par triompher. L'originalité de George Sand, c'est d'avoir rompu avec cette tradition romantique. Ce n'est pas par l'homme que la courtisane sera régénérée, mais par une femme. Seule la femme est capable d'assumer cette tâche." (Sourian 15, my emphasis).
Alice, once the victim of a domineering first husband, who had a miserable marriage in her teen-age years, and who once asked herself, "Mais où est la place de l'amour dans notre société, dans notre siècle surtout?" (82), appears to have found true love and a happy second marriage.
Alice's happy ending, however, is less phenomenal than that of Isidora herself. In her letter to Alice, Isidora describes her retirement to a bucolic spot in Italy. She speaks of a new persona emerging within herself: "un autre moi qui commence, et dont je n'ai pas encore à me plaindre. Celle-là est innocente de mes erreurs passées . . . Elle est douce, patiente et juste . . . . Elle est redevenue simple et quaisi naïve comme un enfant, depuis qu'elle n'a plus souci de vaincre et de dominer" (165).
This new personality has forgiven the former Isidora, who could never forgive herself before. "Il me semble que j'ai assez expié, et que je mérite d'en entrer dans le repos des justes, c'est-à dire de ne plus connaître les passions" (161-62).
Therefore, Isidora no longer feels the pressure to seek after love. The former courtesan now relishes domestic arts and the calmness of her advancing age. She also has adopted a 16-year-old orphan, Agathe, the daughter of a poor artist, who is an example of order, calm, dignity and propriety. Thus, content in her role as single woman and adoptive mother, Isidora realizes, "Il était donc dans ma destinée que les hommes me perdraient et que je ne pourrais être sauvée que par les femmes" (172).
The courtesan was not a typical focus of George Sand’s novels. By the second decade of her long 19th-century career, at which point she had been labeled an "anti-matrimonial novelist" during the 1830s for such works as Indiana (1832), Valentine (1832), Jacques (1834), and the two different versions of Lélia (1833 and 1839), Sand was ready with Isidora in 1845, to look beyond the scenario of the typical marriage of her day that brought only sorrow and tragedy to women. She suggests instead that a woman can achieve fulfillment and self-actualization if she simply abandons the option of marriage or another liaison with a man, lives happily on her own, and learns to relish solitude and domestic arts, and adoptive motherhood. Most important of all, it is Isidora's bonds of friendship with other women that truly bolster her contentment and self-acceptance.
Early in the Sand's 1845 novel, it is revealed that the title character is really two personae: Isidora, an infamous and sought-after courtesan, who escaped from an unhappy youth into the only source of independence she thought she could achieve, and Julie, her given name, and the embodiment of her true romantic and dreamy self.
At the novel's beginning, Isidora is in her early forties and living with a wealthy, older man. However, it is by the second name that Jacques, the young hero who narrates part of the story, first knows her. He immediately associates her with the heroine of the same name in Rousseau's La Nouvelle Héloïse. Isidora herself admires Rousseau, but laments to Jacques of the respected writers lack of understanding of women. "Il n'a pas compris les femmes, ce sublime Rousseau . . . Il n'a pas su, malgré sa bonne volonté, et ses bonnes intentions, en faire autre chose que des êtres secondaires dans la société.
Despite this perception of Rousseau's shortcomings and injustices toward women, Isidora keeps her sentimental, Rousseauistic ideals alive long enough to fall in love with Jacques, a scholar some 10 years her junior. Nevertheless, Isidora is sufficiently far-sighted to realize that Jacques would only expect her to become his ideal "Julie,” which would lead her to dependent and inferior position. "Oh! toujours l'orgueil et la domination de l'homme! Il n'y a donc pas un instant d'ivresse où l'on puisse se réfugier contre les exigences d'un contrat?" She leaves Jacques to travel to Italy with her aging lover, and later marries the older man on his deathbed.
Three years later, as a wealthy widow, she meets Jacques again, and her old feelings are revived. But Isidora is perceptive enough to realize that her late husband's widowed younger sister, Alice, is really Jacques's soul mate. Isidora again voluntarily travels away and leaves the two young people to pursue their love. Isidora quickly ceases to see her lovely, 25-year-old sister-in-law as a rival, and the two bond through correspondence in letters, and this friendship will be instrumental in her reformation.
In her preface to the 1990 reprinted version of Isidora, Eve Souriane states, "Avec George Sand, la réhabilitation de la femme se fera par la femme et sans humiliation. C'est Alice, la belle-sœur d'Isidora, qui sera l'instrument de cette réhabilitation. L'amitié des deux femmes se développe au cours du roman malgré les protagonistes masculins."2 Certainly, a man could not be the catalyst for the courtesan's break with the past. "George Sand avait compris que la réhabilitation de la courtisane ne pouvait se faire par l'amour d'un homme, que c'était là une conception masculine finissant par l'humiliation de la femme" (Souriane 15).
Typical of Sand's novels, Isidora contains—ironically, through Jacques's writings as well as through Isidora's—troubling questions about women's illogical inequality to men in 1840s French society, the lack of decent education for women, and the fact that women have to lose their virtue to gain any measure of power. In one of his cahiers quoted in the novel's first section, Jacques states, " . . la question des femmes est à peu près résolue pour moi. Êtres admirables et divins, vous ne pouvez grandir que dans la vertu, et vous abjurez votre force en perdant la sainte pudeur" (55).
Although Isidora herself has a horror of fellow courtesans who never seek after love, but only for money, she bemoans the plight of kept women everywhere, who are intelligent and sensitive, but dying of sorrow amid lives of opulence and frivolity that they feel that had to accept. "Mais le plus grand malheur qui puisse échoir à une femme comme moi, c'est de n'être plus stupide. Une courtesane intelligente, douée d'un esprit sérieux et d'un cœur aimant! mais c'est un monstruosité!" (128-29).
One would assume at this point, that Isidora might well follow the path of Sand's earlier novels, and conclude with the protagonist sinking into despair and eventual death, but this is not to be. Two heroines triumph in Isidora . First, although the narrator tells little about what happened to Jacques after he and Isidora parted, the correspondence between Isidora and Alice suggests that, 10 years later, Alice and Jacques are still together and happy.
A reunion between Isidora and Alice is an emotional one as Isidora rapturizes about the value of a female friend. "Une femme, disait-elle avec une sorte d'égarement, une amie, un ange, . . . j'en mourrai de bonheur, mais je serai sauvée" (96).
Sourian notes that Sand's originality in Isidora is that she breaks with Romantic tradition by creating a courtesan who is regenerated not by a man, but by a woman. "Mais dans tous les cas la société oppressive et répressive finissait par triompher. L'originalité de George Sand, c'est d'avoir rompu avec cette tradition romantique. Ce n'est pas par l'homme que la courtisane sera régénérée, mais par une femme. Seule la femme est capable d'assumer cette tâche." (Sourian 15, my emphasis).
Alice, once the victim of a domineering first husband, who had a miserable marriage in her teen-age years, and who once asked herself, "Mais où est la place de l'amour dans notre société, dans notre siècle surtout?" (82), appears to have found true love and a happy second marriage.
Alice's happy ending, however, is less phenomenal than that of Isidora herself. In her letter to Alice, Isidora describes her retirement to a bucolic spot in Italy. She speaks of a new persona emerging within herself: "un autre moi qui commence, et dont je n'ai pas encore à me plaindre. Celle-là est innocente de mes erreurs passées . . . Elle est douce, patiente et juste . . . . Elle est redevenue simple et quaisi naïve comme un enfant, depuis qu'elle n'a plus souci de vaincre et de dominer" (165).
This new personality has forgiven the former Isidora, who could never forgive herself before. "Il me semble que j'ai assez expié, et que je mérite d'en entrer dans le repos des justes, c'est-à dire de ne plus connaître les passions" (161-62).
Therefore, Isidora no longer feels the pressure to seek after love. The former courtesan now relishes domestic arts and the calmness of her advancing age. She also has adopted a 16-year-old orphan, Agathe, the daughter of a poor artist, who is an example of order, calm, dignity and propriety. Thus, content in her role as single woman and adoptive mother, Isidora realizes, "Il était donc dans ma destinée que les hommes me perdraient et que je ne pourrais être sauvée que par les femmes" (172).
July 9, 2023
The plight and pathos of the French courtesan is a common topic in literature, well known in such pathetic portraits as Zola's 1880 Nana. A typical theme in such stories hints that such women come to a bad end because of divine retribution, karma, or more realistically, because they are victims of a corrupt and misogynistic society.Less common, however, has been a novelist's follow-through on the actions and thoughts of the aging courtesan who leaves her lifestyle behind and goes on to a rewarding and mellow life of service, study, bonding with other, women, satisfaction, and repose—all with no sense of penitence or shame . . . and no men.
Early in the Sand's 1845 novel, it is revealed that the title character is really two personae: Isidora, an infamous and sought-after courtesan, who escaped from an unhappy youth into the only source of independence she thought she could achieve, and Julie, her given name, and the embodiment of her true romantic and dreamy self.
At the novel's beginning, Isidora is in her early forties and living with a wealthy, older man. However, it is by the second name that Jacques, the young hero who narrates part of the story, first knows her. He immediately associates her with the heroine of the same name in Rousseau's La Nouvelle Héloïse. Isidora herself admires Rousseau, but laments to Jacques of the respected writers lack of understanding of women. "Il n'a pas compris les femmes, ce sublime Rousseau . . . Il n'a pas su, malgré sa bonne volonté, et ses bonnes intentions, en faire autre chose que des êtres secondaires dans la société.1
Despite this perception of Rousseau's shortcomings and injustices toward women, Isidora keeps her sentimental, Rousseauistic ideals alive long enough to fall in love with Jacques, a scholar some 10 years her junior. Nevertheless, Isidora is sufficiently far-sighted to realize that Jacques would only expect her to become his ideal "Julie, " which would lead her to dependent and inferior position. "Oh! toujours l'orgueil et la domination de l'homme! Il n'y a donc pas un instant d'ivresse où l'on puisse se réfugier contre les exigences d'un contrat?" She leaves Jacques to travel to Italy with her aging lover, and later marries the older man on his deathbed.
Three years later, as a wealthy widow, she meets Jacques again, and her old feelings are revived. But Isidora is perceptive enough to realize that her late husband's widowed younger sister, Alice, is really Jacques's soul mate. Isidora again voluntarily travels away and leaves the two young people to pursue their love. Isidora quickly ceases to see her lovely, 25-year-old sister-in-law as a rival, and the two bond through correspondence in letters, and this friendship will be instrumental in her reformation.
In her preface to the 1990 reprinted version of Isidora, Eve Souriane states, "Avec George Sand, la réhabilitation de la femme se fera par la femme et sans humiliation. C'est Alice, la belle-sœur d'Isidora, qui sera l'instrument de cette réhabilitation. L'amitié des deux femmes se développe au cours du roman malgré les protagonistes masculins."2 Certainly, a man could not be the catalyst for the courtesan's break with the past. "George Sand avait compris que la réhabilitation de la courtisane ne pouvait se faire par l'amour d'un homme, que c'était là une conception masculine finissant par l'humiliation de la femme" (Souriane 15).
Typical of Sand's novels, Isidora contains—ironically, through Jacques's writings as well as through Isidora's—troubling questions about women's illogical inequality to men in 1840s French society, the lack of decent education for women, and the fact that women have to lose their virtue to gain any measure of power. In one of his cahiers quoted in the novel's first section, Jacques states, " . . la question des femmes est à peu près résolue pour moi. Êtres admirables et divins, vous ne pouvez grandir que dans la vertu, et vous abjurez votre force en perdant la sainte pudeur" (55).
Although Isidora herself has a horror of fellow courtesans who never seek after love, but only for money, she bemoans the plight of kept women everywhere, who are intelligent and sensitive, but dying of sorrow amid lives of opulence and frivolity that they feel that had to accept. "Mais le plus grand malheur qui puisse échoir à une femme comme moi, c'est de n'être plus stupide. Une courtesane intelligente, douée d'un esprit sérieux et d'un cœur aimant! mais c'est un monstruosité!" (128-29).
One would assume at this point, that Isidora might well follow the path of Sand's earlier novels, and conclude with the protagonist sinking into despair and eventual death, but this is not to be. Two heroines triumph in Isidora . First, although the narrator tells little about what happened to Jacques after he and Isidora parted, the correspondence between Isidora and Alice suggests that, 10 years later, Alice and Jacques are still together and happy.
A reunion between Isidora and Alice is an emotional one as Isidora rapturizes about the value of a female friend. "Une femme, disait-elle avec une sorte d'égarement, une amie, un ange, . . . j'en mourrai de bonheur, mais je serai sauvée" (96).
Sourian notes that Sand's originality in Isidora is that she breaks with Romantic tradition by creating a courtesan who is regenerated not by a man, but by a woman. "Mais dans tous les cas la société oppressive et répressive finissait par triompher. L'originalité de George Sand, c'est d'avoir rompu avec cette tradition romantique. Ce n'est pas par l'homme que la courtisane sera régénérée, mais par une femme. Seule la femme est capable d'assumer cette tâche." (Sourian 15, my emphasis).
Alice, once the victim of a domineering first husband, who had a miserable marriage in her teen-age years, and who once asked herself, "Mais où est la place de l'amour dans notre société, dans notre siècle surtout?" (82), appears to have found true love and a happy second marriage.
Alice's happy ending, however, is less phenomenal than that of Isidora herself. In her letter to Alice, Isidora describes her retirement to a bucolic spot in Italy. She speaks of a new persona emerging within herself: "un autre moi qui commence, et dont je n'ai pas encore à me plaindre. Celle-là est innocente de mes erreurs passées . . . Elle est douce, patiente et juste . . . . Elle est redevenue simple et quaisi naïve comme un enfant, depuis qu'elle n'a plus souci de vaincre et de dominer" (165).
This new personality has forgiven the former Isidora, who could never forgive herself before. "Il me semble que j'ai assez expié, et que je mérite d'en entrer dans le repos des justes, c'est-à dire de ne plus connaître les passions" (161-62).
Therefore, Isidora no longer feels the pressure to seek after love. The former courtesan now relishes domestic arts and the calmness of her advancing age. She also has adopted a 16-year-old orphan, Agathe, the daughter of a poor artist, who is an example of order, calm, dignity and propriety. Thus, content in her role as single woman and adoptive mother, Isidora realizes, "Il était donc dans ma destinée que les hommes me perdraient et que je ne pourrais être sauvée que par les femmes" (172).
Early in the Sand's 1845 novel, it is revealed that the title character is really two personae: Isidora, an infamous and sought-after courtesan, who escaped from an unhappy youth into the only source of independence she thought she could achieve, and Julie, her given name, and the embodiment of her true romantic and dreamy self.
At the novel's beginning, Isidora is in her early forties and living with a wealthy, older man. However, it is by the second name that Jacques, the young hero who narrates part of the story, first knows her. He immediately associates her with the heroine of the same name in Rousseau's La Nouvelle Héloïse. Isidora herself admires Rousseau, but laments to Jacques of the respected writers lack of understanding of women. "Il n'a pas compris les femmes, ce sublime Rousseau . . . Il n'a pas su, malgré sa bonne volonté, et ses bonnes intentions, en faire autre chose que des êtres secondaires dans la société.1
Despite this perception of Rousseau's shortcomings and injustices toward women, Isidora keeps her sentimental, Rousseauistic ideals alive long enough to fall in love with Jacques, a scholar some 10 years her junior. Nevertheless, Isidora is sufficiently far-sighted to realize that Jacques would only expect her to become his ideal "Julie, " which would lead her to dependent and inferior position. "Oh! toujours l'orgueil et la domination de l'homme! Il n'y a donc pas un instant d'ivresse où l'on puisse se réfugier contre les exigences d'un contrat?" She leaves Jacques to travel to Italy with her aging lover, and later marries the older man on his deathbed.
Three years later, as a wealthy widow, she meets Jacques again, and her old feelings are revived. But Isidora is perceptive enough to realize that her late husband's widowed younger sister, Alice, is really Jacques's soul mate. Isidora again voluntarily travels away and leaves the two young people to pursue their love. Isidora quickly ceases to see her lovely, 25-year-old sister-in-law as a rival, and the two bond through correspondence in letters, and this friendship will be instrumental in her reformation.
In her preface to the 1990 reprinted version of Isidora, Eve Souriane states, "Avec George Sand, la réhabilitation de la femme se fera par la femme et sans humiliation. C'est Alice, la belle-sœur d'Isidora, qui sera l'instrument de cette réhabilitation. L'amitié des deux femmes se développe au cours du roman malgré les protagonistes masculins."2 Certainly, a man could not be the catalyst for the courtesan's break with the past. "George Sand avait compris que la réhabilitation de la courtisane ne pouvait se faire par l'amour d'un homme, que c'était là une conception masculine finissant par l'humiliation de la femme" (Souriane 15).
Typical of Sand's novels, Isidora contains—ironically, through Jacques's writings as well as through Isidora's—troubling questions about women's illogical inequality to men in 1840s French society, the lack of decent education for women, and the fact that women have to lose their virtue to gain any measure of power. In one of his cahiers quoted in the novel's first section, Jacques states, " . . la question des femmes est à peu près résolue pour moi. Êtres admirables et divins, vous ne pouvez grandir que dans la vertu, et vous abjurez votre force en perdant la sainte pudeur" (55).
Although Isidora herself has a horror of fellow courtesans who never seek after love, but only for money, she bemoans the plight of kept women everywhere, who are intelligent and sensitive, but dying of sorrow amid lives of opulence and frivolity that they feel that had to accept. "Mais le plus grand malheur qui puisse échoir à une femme comme moi, c'est de n'être plus stupide. Une courtesane intelligente, douée d'un esprit sérieux et d'un cœur aimant! mais c'est un monstruosité!" (128-29).
One would assume at this point, that Isidora might well follow the path of Sand's earlier novels, and conclude with the protagonist sinking into despair and eventual death, but this is not to be. Two heroines triumph in Isidora . First, although the narrator tells little about what happened to Jacques after he and Isidora parted, the correspondence between Isidora and Alice suggests that, 10 years later, Alice and Jacques are still together and happy.
A reunion between Isidora and Alice is an emotional one as Isidora rapturizes about the value of a female friend. "Une femme, disait-elle avec une sorte d'égarement, une amie, un ange, . . . j'en mourrai de bonheur, mais je serai sauvée" (96).
Sourian notes that Sand's originality in Isidora is that she breaks with Romantic tradition by creating a courtesan who is regenerated not by a man, but by a woman. "Mais dans tous les cas la société oppressive et répressive finissait par triompher. L'originalité de George Sand, c'est d'avoir rompu avec cette tradition romantique. Ce n'est pas par l'homme que la courtisane sera régénérée, mais par une femme. Seule la femme est capable d'assumer cette tâche." (Sourian 15, my emphasis).
Alice, once the victim of a domineering first husband, who had a miserable marriage in her teen-age years, and who once asked herself, "Mais où est la place de l'amour dans notre société, dans notre siècle surtout?" (82), appears to have found true love and a happy second marriage.
Alice's happy ending, however, is less phenomenal than that of Isidora herself. In her letter to Alice, Isidora describes her retirement to a bucolic spot in Italy. She speaks of a new persona emerging within herself: "un autre moi qui commence, et dont je n'ai pas encore à me plaindre. Celle-là est innocente de mes erreurs passées . . . Elle est douce, patiente et juste . . . . Elle est redevenue simple et quaisi naïve comme un enfant, depuis qu'elle n'a plus souci de vaincre et de dominer" (165).
This new personality has forgiven the former Isidora, who could never forgive herself before. "Il me semble que j'ai assez expié, et que je mérite d'en entrer dans le repos des justes, c'est-à dire de ne plus connaître les passions" (161-62).
Therefore, Isidora no longer feels the pressure to seek after love. The former courtesan now relishes domestic arts and the calmness of her advancing age. She also has adopted a 16-year-old orphan, Agathe, the daughter of a poor artist, who is an example of order, calm, dignity and propriety. Thus, content in her role as single woman and adoptive mother, Isidora realizes, "Il était donc dans ma destinée que les hommes me perdraient et que je ne pourrais être sauvée que par les femmes" (172).
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