George Sand 
Valvèdre 

An astonishingly modern novel, George Sand’s
Valvèdre questions traditional Romantic representations of women and exposes the disastrous consequences such notions of femininity have for both male and female characters at a time when divorce was illegal. This first English translation by Françoise Massardier-Kenney shows Sand’s control of style and her understanding of the major tensions of early modern France: the role of women in society, the nature of motherhood, the relations between science and art, and the nature of prejudice.

Table of Content

Introduction

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

Last Part

About the author

Françoise Massardier-Kenney is Professor of French and Director of the Institute for Applied Linguistics at Kent State University. She is the coeditor (with Doris Y. Kadish) of
Translating Slavery: Gender and Race in French Women’s Writing, 1783–1823 and author of
Gender in the Fiction of George Sand.