Sand’s La Mare au diable, Awakening through ‘Evil’ and the Hero’s Journey

The theme of evil implicit in Sand’s title and confirmed by her quotation from Genesis found above a woodcarving of Holbein points to the hero’s journey in La Mare au diable (1846). This narrative device explains the transformation of Germain in the devil’s pond as the shock of awakening from depression and from a false innocence by an encounter with the Shadow. Sand’s portrayal of evil as a necessary encounter in the journey to maturity shows intuitive insight. The transformation of her hero upon exiting from the woods is confirmed by his acceptance of rejection and by his subsequent realization of a Warrior’s energy in the defense of Marie, a precondition to attaining the Lover’s stature. His service to love and the mediation of woman’s culture lead to marriage and to self-integration celebrated in a closing scene of poetic union between earth and heaven bearing witness to Germain’s new consciousness of nature’s beauty and the gift of life. (JFH)