Présence du roman gothique anglais dans les premiers romans de George Sand by Marilyn Mallia (review)

The impact of the English Gothic novel on French Romanticism, and more particularly on the French novel of the period, has typically been downplayed by French critics, who have promoted instead the influence of the native roman noir. Challenging that "séparation critique entre le courant gothique et le romantisme français" (13), Mallia emphasizes the presence of the Gothic in Sand's early novels, from Indiana (1832) through La comtesse de Rudolstadt (1843). Nor was it simply a matter of superficial imitation, she contends, for "le gothique sandien exploite [...] les implications profondes et idéologiques du genre pour la transmission de thèmes fort importants pour elle" (20). In a lengthy introduction, meticulously documented, Mallia first retraces the evolution of the English Gothic novel, from Walpole's The Castle of Otranto (1764), through the works of Radcliffe and Lewis, to Shelley's Frankenstein (1818) and Maturin's Melmoth the Wanderer (1820). It was especially Radcliffe's heroine, "en fonction de sa forte charge affective et de son aptitude à véhiculer des aspects clé de la condition féminine et de la politique sexuelle de l'époque" (21), that provided an appealing model, Mallia suggests, one that would allow Sand to represent in her own work "les conflits de genre engendrés par le Code Napoléon ainsi que son idéal d'une société plus équitable et juste" (43). Rather than treat each of Sand's novels individually, Mallia organizes her study in a more synthetic manner, analyzing in turn "trois points de tension qui informent le gothique sandien [...]: le dédoublement gothique de l'héroïne, son itinéraire et le dénouement gothique" (51). Sand's characteristic doubling of female characters, illustrated by Indiana and Noun in her debut novel, allowed her to foreground the extent and range of the constraints imposed upon French women at the time, within the symbolic "édifice claustral" (62) that was the Napoleonic Code. Not until a decade later, in Consuelo, would a Sandian protagonist finally be able to display "une grande force de volonté et une résistance dignes d'une héroïne gothique" (129). The key feature of the itinerary traced in different ways by all of Sand's heroines, the negotiation of obstacles, would likewise find its ultimate resolution only in"Consuelo-La comtesse de Rudolstadt, son chef-d'oeuvre du remaniement gothique" (204). The third major section of her study, in which Mallia examines the endings of these novels, is noticeably briefer, and the treatment seems at times more cursory. In the final analysis, as she points out quite appropriately, Sand's adaptation of the Gothic,"plutôt que d'apporter des solutions, souligne la nature des problématiques pour la femme vivant en France pendant la première moitié du XIX^e siècle" (246). As the substantial bibliography indicates, Mallia is cognizant of existing scholarship (in English as well as in French) on both Sand and the Gothic novel, although the profusion of footnotes at times can be distracting. But this is a welcome study, intelligent and well-written, offering a fresh perspective on an important aspect of Sand's work that has not been fully appreciated.