George Sand's La Mare au diable: A Study in Male Passivity

George Sand's La Mare au diable has usually been dismissed as a pastoral idyll suitable only for the very naive or else seen as part of her "socialist" vision, but her story is really an exploration of male psychology. At the beginning Germain is completely dominated by his father-in-law, who represents the conformist values of the rural society. However, Germain gains a measure of maturity by falling in love when lost with a girl in some woods one night. The images of nature and the characters themselves are projections of aspects of Germain's psyche, which is studied from a Jungian viewpoint. (RBG)