George-Sandizm

[Francoise Rosset]

Would some Pavlova/Sand experts out there illuminate something
for me, please:
On page 119 of _A Double Life_, (B. Heldt's translation) Vera
Vladimirovna confiscates two of Dmitry's letters to Cecily, deeming
them to have "a certain unpleasant strain of George-Sandism, which
it was necessary to keep from her daughter up to the wedding itself"

I know who George Sand is and have indeed read her as far back
as high school. I even taught _Francois le champi_ in a French lit
class. What I don't know is what would be understood or described
in this Russian reception, given what GS had and had not yet
written by 1848 ...

[The one prior time GS is mentioned in the novel (80) it is because
she made the common folk chic, but that's not relevant here].

So:
feminism? would Ivachinsky care?
her defense of "misalliances?" would be too close to the bone.
liberal tendencies? Ivachinsky does not seem to me to have one
political nerve in his body, although political posturing is not out
of the question.
"excessive" or suggestive eroticism? hardly likely in a letter from
Ivachinsky to his presumably innocent fiancee -- but it would
explain the bit about keeping it from Cecily only until the
wedding and not after ...

Help?!

Feel free to answer on-list
or off-list at frosset at wheatonma.edu
Many thanks,
-FR

Francoise Rosset
Russian and Russian Studies
Coordinator, German and Russian
Wheaton College
Norton, Massachusetts 02766
Office: (508) 285-3696
FAX:   (508) 286-3640

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