Word: sand
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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After depicting Sand as a feminist, Barry seems to change his mind and say she was not. The ambivalence was Sand's as well. Although she lived her life as a free, relatively "liberated" woman, and although feminist themes appear throughout her writing, she had few female friends and repeatedly refused to identify herself with, or participate in the efforts of the French feminist activists of her day, preferring to devote herself to other political causes. She was "less interested in promoting women's rights than humanities, believing mankind's necessarily preceded women's," Barry writes. Sand herself wrote, "Women...
...Sand was deeply committed to non-violent political change, characterizing herself at various points as a "Christian humanist" (she was a lapsed Catholic), a socialist and a communist. She fervently participated in the political upheavals in the 1840s and early '50s, writing "militantly socialist" novels and plays, publishing pamphlets and articles promoting revolution. In a letter, she wrote...
...Sand's last political passion was anti-clericalism. Once again--in her sixtieth year--she became "the political clarion of a rising generation," Barry writes. One of her plays, Villemer, denouncing the clergy's political influence that might one day explode "in a vast plot against social and individual freedom" created an uproar in Paris. Literally thousands of students, Barry claims, mobbed the theatre and "escorted her home to the cries of 'Long live George Sand! Down with the clericalists!'" Several students even attempted to unhitch the horses from her carriage to pull it themselves...
...violence, the fear that her own writings had contributed to the bloodiness of the uprisings and the slaughter of many young radicals disillusioned Sand, causing her to retreat to her old country home and withdraw from politics to write peacefully until her death in 1876. Horrified by the violence, she opposed the revolutionary uprisings and the rule of the 1871 Commune. But she retained the belief that socialism would occur gradually at a point distantly in the future, writing, "I am, as always socially red...but one must never impose one's convictions by force...
Unfortunately both Sand's radicalism and her later conservatism are lost in Barry's lengthy and confusing historical accounts, boring for a reader familiar with the history and unenlightening for the uninformed. The political accounts lack coherence and rely too heavily on loosely connected fragments from Sand's journals. Unlike the vivid portrayals of the literary figures, Sand's political associates are names without personalities...