[100 Challenge] Roberta Gattel_16

The devil’s swamp, George Sand, 1846

When I was in high school, I used to buy random books. I used to go to second-hand markets and choose the titles that intrigued me the most. “The Devil's Swamp” is one of those books I bought because the title reminded me of a Gothic story and - above all - because they sold it for 50 cents; it was an Italian edition from the 1960s, and it seemed to have been gnawed by mice, and maybe it was. I had already heard of George Sand but didn't know how to place the author in space or time. I didn't even know how to put it in the gender since she was a woman, and I discovered it long after I bought the book, which I had forgotten on a shelf. When I found it again, during one of my many moves, I was already a woman.

I had stopped being the Indiana Jones of literature, searching for precious finds in the second-hand garage because I had already read all those that were considered the great classics of Western literature (and at that point, finding "exotic" names on the spines of the bindings market were less and less frequent and certainly much less exciting). The introduction to the collection of Sand’s writings didn’t say much: a comment on the questionable moral conduct of Amantine Aurore Lucile Dupin (George Sand, precisely) and a final note of demerit on the fact that she hadn't dared to publish the lyrics under her real name. There was, in fact, a bitter comparison with other female authors of her time, the Bronte sisters and Jane Austen, who, according to the curator, had "no need to hide" behind male guises.

This comment struck me so much that it reminded me of the book and George Sand for a long time. It is impressive how a preface can influence and shape judgment and perception. I later discovered that this information was false and that no woman of that period could be published using her female name; it was not a question of courage, coherence, or intellectual honesty. , no publisher of the time would have considered a female work for printing. All three of the Bronte sisters published under the surname Bell (with the names of Currer, Ellis, and Acton corresponding to the initials of their real names), Jane Austen instead anonymously. As regards the comment on moral conduct, I think George Sand experienced sex for what it was: a natural thing. I wouldn't say that she was sexually free, but that she managed to free herself, probably at a very high cost, from much of the sexual oppression of her time. Surprisingly, today, attention remains not on her writings but all under her skirts.