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Updated: May 28, 2025
Uninvited, therefore, but unrepulsed, Hymen approached our heroine in the form of Casimir Dudevant, the illegitimate, but acknowledged son and heir of Colonel Dudevant, an officer of good standing and reasonable fortune. The only feeling he seems to have inspired in the bosom of his future wife was one of mild good-will.
However unjustifiable the proceeding resorted to for a time by George Sand and Rosa Bonheur may be held to be, it cannot possibly be said they had no motive for it but a fantastic one. Writing to her mother from Nohant, whither she had returned in April for a length of time as agreed, Madam Dudevant speaks out characteristically in defense of her love of independence:
Her fortune was a fairly large one for the times, and yet not large enough to attract men who were quite her equals. Presently, however, it brought to her a sort of country squire, named Casimir Dudevant. He was the illegitimate son of the Baron Dudevant. He had been in the army, and had studied law; but he possessed no intellectual tastes.
It was to the crushing effect that a woman ought not to write at all. Her sex, Madame Dudevant was informed, can have no proper place in literature whatsoever.
"Exempli gratia, Miss Martineau and Madame Dudevant, who are crowned heads among the cognoscenti?
"Madame Dantès is, I am told, as devoted to the good cause as her husband," remarked Flocon. "She is a second Madame Roland!" exclaimed Louis Blanc. "France will owe much to such women as she and her friend Madame Dudevant!"
In Indiana and its immediate successors, consciously or unconsciously, she declares to the world what a beautiful soul M. Dudevant condemned to sewing on buttons; in Jacques she paints the man who might fitly have matched her spirit; and by the entire series, which now impresses us as fantastic in sentiment no less than in plot, she won her early reputation as the apologist for free love, the adversary of marriage.
Before the actual conclusion of the law-suit his appeal was withdrawn. As a result, the previous judgment in favor of Madame Dudevant was virtually confirmed, and the details were settled by private agreement. It is almost impossible to overrate the importance to George Sand of a conclusion that gave her back her old home of Nohant, and secured to her the permanent companionship of her children.
Although not yet at the height of his fame he had produced many most successful works, and Madame Dudevant, according to her own account, derived great profit from the study of his method, although with no inclination to follow in his direction. Yet he afterwards observed to her, "Our two roads lead to the same goal."
Dudevant styling herself George Sand, a name by which she was to be illustrious ever after. As a novelist, she had found her real vocation. She was not yet well known, but she was on the verge of fame. As soon as she had written Indiana and Valentine, George Sand had secured a place in the world of letters.
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