Indiana
By George Sand
‘I know that I am your slave and you the master. The laws of this country make you my master. You can bind my body, tie my hands, govern my acts. You have the right of the stronger, and society confirms you in it; but you cannot bind my will, Monsieur’
George Sand’s first novel weaves an exotic tale of passion and tangled hearts – at the centre is Indiana, a young woman who arrives in France at the age of nineteen to be married to a man twice her age. Accompanying her is Noun, her companion and maid. Indiana grew up motherless on a plantation in L’isle Bourbon, a fictional island in the French West Indies. She is described as “Creole”, with white skin, black hair and blue eyes. She is pallid, fragile, while Noun is tall, strong and extremely beautiful – definitely black, or at least mixed race. They are extremely close, and Noun does not appear to be at all servile. Could she actually be Indiana’s half sister?
George Sand, born Amantine Aurore Dupin in 1804, cut a dashing, brilliant figure on the European cultural scene in the 19th Century. Notorious for wearing male attire and smoking tobacco in public, she was undoubtedly a prototype feminist. Much of her work addresses the indentured condition of women at all levels of society, and reaches out into broader social issues – slavery, colonialism, industrialization – Indiana’s husband, Colonel Delamare, retires from the Army and sets up a successful factory. Isolated in the French countryside Indiana and Noun cling to each other for comfort – until the appearance of a dashing neighbour, the irresistible dilettante Raymon de Ramiere. While Indiana appears at first to embody the ideal of 19th Century womanhood, with her “sacred modesty, her spotless robe and chaste girdle,” it is Noun who succumbs to Ramiere, with an “insane passion which consumes the vitals of this lustful Creole”. There are different types of slavery in this novel – the slavery of desire, marital slavery whereby a married woman becomes the property of her husband – but most of all literal slavery, which throws Noun, unprotected, at the mercy of Ramiere.
Sexually charged for its time, this is a captivating tale that takes place in rural France, in Paris and the West Indies. Indiana, watched over by the stoic, melancholy figure of her English cousin Ralph, casts herself adrift in her attempts to throw off the bonds which tie her. Seas and rivers run through this story, leading to tragedy, but beneath the turbulent melodrama lies a timeless tale, reaching down through the centuries, of a girl’s desire for freedom.
