Valentine

This is George Sand's second novel. Like Indiana, her first, it explores the relationship between men and women. Valentine, an aristocratic girl, falls desperately in love with Benedict, the son of a poor farmer. Again, like Indiana, this novel challenges preconceived masculine assumptions about woman's role in society. In loving Benedict, Valentine rebels against her family and her class.

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.