A Question of Silence: George Sand's Nanon

This article argues that in Nanon (1872) Sand was working out a complex response to the reoccurence of violent revolutions in France. The novel not only presents a traditional female narrative plot (romance and marriage), but also registers a hidden gain of the Revolution of 1789. When she wrote Nanon, Sand was torn by the violent experience of the Commune, and her ambivalence about the Terror reflects her anguish over the events of 1871. Sand views the Revolution, Terror included, as a gain, as a spring for her female character's accession to knowledge, mobility, and economic autonomy. In the novel, the feminine presence takes over through seeing and moving; that is, by privileging the spatial. Sand abandons the favored position of narrative authority and shifts textual power from narration to description. Throughout her text, Sand moves in the neglected realm of the spatial and registers a feminine access to power through her use of visual representation. (FM-K)