"She did not love her husband, for the mere reason, perhaps, that she was told it was her duty to love him and that it had become her second nature, a principle and a law of her conscience to resist inwardly all moral constraint." She affected a most irritating gentleness, an exasperating submissiveness. When she put on her superior, resigned airs, it was enough to unhinge an angel. Besides, what was there to complain about, and why should she not accommodate herself to conditions of existence with which so many others fall in?
She must not be compared to others, though. She is eminently a distinguished woman, and she asks without shrinking: "Do you know what it means to love a woman such as I am?"In her long silences and her persistent melancholy, she is no doubt thinking of the love appropriate to a woman such as she is.
She was a princess in exile and times were then hard for princesses.
That is why the one in question took refuge in her homesick sorrow.
All this is what people will not understand. Instead of rising to such sublimities, or of being lost in fogs, they judge from mere facts. And on coming across a young wife who is inclined to prefer a handsome, dark young man to a husband who is turning grey, they are apt to conclude: "Well, this is not the first time we have met with a similar case. It is hardly worth while making such a fuss about a young plague of a woman who wants to go to the bad."It would be very unjust, though, not to recognize that _Indiana_is a most remarkable novel. There is a certain relief in the various characters, Colonel Delmare, Raymon, Ralph and Inaiana.
We ought to question the husbands who married wives belonging to the race of misunderstood women brought into vogue by _Indiana_.
_Valentine_, too, is the story of a woman unhappily married.
This time the chief _role_ is given to the lover, and not to the woman.
Instead of the misunderstood woman, though, we have the typical frenzied lover, created by the romantic school. Louise-Valentine de Raimbault is about to marry Norbert-Evariste de Lansac, when suddenly this young person, who is accustomed to going about in the country round and to the village fetes, falls in love with the nephew of one of her farmers. The young man's name is Benedict, and he is a peasant who has had some education. His mentality is probably that of a present-day elementary school-teacher. Valentine cannot resist him, although we are told that Benedict is not very handsome.
It is his soul which Valentine loves in him. Benedict knows very well that he cannot marry Valentine, but he can cause her a great deal of annoyance by way of proving his love. On the night of the wedding he is in the nuptial chamber, from which the author has taken care to banish the husband for the time being. Benedict watches over the slumber of the woman he loves, and leaves her an epistle in which he declares that, after hesitating whether he should kill her husband, her, or himself, or whether he should kill all three, or only select two of the three, and after adopting in turn each of these combinations, he has decided to only kill himself. He is found in a ditch in a terrible plight, but we are by no means rid of him.
Benedict is not dead, and he has a great deal of harm to do yet.
We shall meet with him again several times, always hidden behind curtains, listening to all that is said and watching all that takes place.
At the right moment he comes out with his pistol in his hand.
The husband is away during all this time. No one troubles about him, though. He is a bad husband, or rather he is--a husband, and Benedict has nothing to fear as far as he is concerned.
But one day a peasant, who does not like the looks of Benedict, attacks him with his pitchfork and puts an end to this valuable life.
The question arises, by what right Benedict disturbs Valentine's tranquillity. The answer is by the right of his passion for her.
He has an income of about twenty pounds a year. It would be impossible for him to marry on that. What has he to offer to the woman whose peace of mind he disturbs and whose position he ruins? He offers himself.
Surely that should be enough. Then, too, it is impossible to reason with individuals of his temperament. We have only to look at him, with his sickly pallor and the restless light in his eyes. We have only to listen to the sound of his voice and his excited speeches.
At times he goes in for wild declamation, and immediately afterwards for cold irony and sarcasm. He is always talking of death.
When he attempts to shoot himself he always misses, but when Adele d'Hervey resists him, at the time he has taken the name of Antony, he kills her. He is therefore a dangerous madman.
We now have two fresh personages for novels, the misunderstood woman and the frenzied lover. It is a pity they do not marry each other, and so rid us of them.
We must not lose sight, though, of the fact that, contestable as _Valentine_ certainly is as a novel of passion, there is a pastoral novel of the highest order contained in this book. The setting of the story is delightful. George Sand has placed the scene in that Black Valley which she knew so well and loved so dearly.
It is the first of her novels in which she celebrates her birthplace.
There are walks along the country pathways, long meditations at night, village weddings and fetes. All the poetry and all the picturesqueness of the country transform and embellish the story.
In _Jacques_ we have the history of a man unhappily married, and this, through the reciprocity which is inevitable under the circumstances, is another story of a woman unhappily married.
At the age of thirty-five, after a stormy existence, in which years count double, Jacques marries Fernande, a woman much younger than he is. After a few unhappy months he sees the first clouds appearing in his horizon. He sends for his sister Sylvia to come and live with himself and his wife. Sylvia, like Jacques, is an exceptional individual. She is proud, haughty and reserved.
