The Marquise and Pauline Two Novellas

In The Marquise, George Sand reacts against the tradition of the libertine novels of the 19th century by making the Marquise the narrator of the story, thus giving her control of the action. Sand deconstructs the myth of the seducer by making Lelio, the hero, the subject of the Marquise's desire. Pauline's two female protagonists represent diametrically opposed 19th-century female roles. Pauline is trapped by the bourgeois strictures of the time, while her friend, Laurence, an actress and intellectual, is independent both financially and emotionally.

George Sand is the pen name of Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin, Baroness Dudevant, a 19th century French novelist and memoirist. Sand is best known for her novels Indiana, Lélia, and Consuelo, and for her memoir A Winter in Majorca, in which she reflects on her time on the island with Chopin in 1838-39. A champion of the poor and working classes, Sand was an early socialist who published her own newspaper using a workers' co-operative and scorned gender conventions by wearing men's clothing and smoking tobacco in public. George Sand died in France in 1876.