Plots of Land: Revolution and Property Reform in Victor Ducange’s Isaurine et Jean-Pohl ou Les Révolutions du château de Gît-au-Diable (1830)

The revolutionary period in France witnessed significant changes in the ownership of land as well as in the vision of property and the laws governing it. The feudal system of divided domain was unraveled; the estates of Church and émigrés were confiscated and auctioned off; communes were divided; and power and property were gradually disentangled in a process that Rafe Blaufarb has called the “Great Demarcation.” Literary representations of this process, however, remain understudied. This essay addresses this gap by analyzing a novel that traces these changes in unusual detail: Victor Ducange’s Isaurine et Jean-Pohl ou Les Révolutions du château de Gît-au-Diable (1830). It argues that the novel exemplifies a new type of narrative, which I call “plots of land,” in which an estate becomes a protagonist or co-protagonist of the work. The study then examines Ducange’s representations of the property regimes in the pre- and post-revolutionary periods and shows how his female characters serve as metaphors for different ways of possessing the land.