Indiana: Lieux et personnages féminins

This study of George Sand's first novel Indiana (1832) analyses the connection between Sand's descriptions of place and the enhancement of her heroine's character. A textual analysis of the three kinds of places Sand describes – interior, false-exterior, true exterior – reveals the care and originality with which she built descriptive detail in order to stress her heroine's progressive liberation. This textual focus also shows that the common association made between women and water must be abandoned and that the "male" narrative voice gives way to the "female" descriptive gaze. Finally, the article shows why the typical view of Sand's method as romantic and of the novel's ending as sentimental and disappointing must be discarded. (In French) (FM-K)