Mauprat is a novel about love and education by the French novelist George Sand. It was published in serial form in the French literary magazine Revue des deux Mondes from April to June 1837. Like many of Sand's novels, Mauprat borrows from various fictional genres: the Gothic novel, chivalric romance, the Bildungsroman, detective fiction, and the historical novel.
American author Henry James called Mauprat a "solid, masterly, manly book".
Russian literary critic Vissarion Belinsky praised the novel for its "profound and poetic idea, that of a strong, intelligent, beautiful woman raising a man above his bestial passions". According to Columbia University's Lesley Singer Herrmann, Belinsky's opinion of Mauprat "set the tone for Sand's reception in Russia in the 1840s and 50s, where she was proclaimed the 'advocate of women as Schiller had been the advocate of humanity.'"
The French women's magazine Elle similarly hailed Mauprat as Sand's "feminist manifesto" in 2021 for its frank depiction of sexual harassment and violence towards women, centuries before the Me Too movement.
Literary scholar Patricia Thomson argued that Mauprat influenced Emily Brontë's 1847 novel Wuthering Heights. She noted that both stories take place in the 1770s; contain "uninhibited ... references to the devil, hell, and damnation"; use "two houses to represent opposing ways of life"; and recount "the obsessive devotion of one man for one woman, which lasted not only for life but beyond the grave". Thomson stated that "the parallels and connections are there in profusion and I myself have little doubt that Mauprat formed part of the literary - and therefore, living - experience on which Emily Brontë drew."
Mauprat was adapted into a silent film with the same title by French director Jean Epstein in 1926. Luis Buñuel was assistant director on this film; it was his first film credit. The novel was also adapted into a film for television by French director Jacques Trébouta [fr] (wikipedia.org)
About the author
Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin de Francueil (1 July 1804 - 8 June 1876), best known by her pen name George Sand was a French novelist, memoirist and journalist. One of the most popular writers in Europe in her lifetime, being more renowned than either Victor Hugo or Honoré de Balzac in England in the 1830s and 1840s, Sand is recognised as one of the most notable writers of the European Romantic era, with more than 50 volumes of various works to her credit, including tales, plays and political texts, alongside her 70 novels.
Like her great-grandmother, Louise Dupin, whom she admired, George Sand stood up for women, advocated passion, castigated marriage and fought against the prejudices of a conservative society.
Sand's first literary efforts were collaborations with the writer Jules Sandeau. They published several stories together, signing them Jules Sand. Sand's first published novel Rose et Blanche (1831) was written in collaboration with Sandeau. She subsequently adopted, for her first independent novel, Indiana (1832), the pen name that made her famous - George Sand.
By the age of 27, Sand was Europe's most popular writer of either gender, more popular than both Victor Hugo and Honoré de Balzac in England in the 1830s and 1840s, and she remained immensely popular as a writer throughout her lifetime and long after her death. Early in her career, her work was in high demand; by 1836, the first of several compendia of her writings was published in 24 volumes. In total, four separate editions of her "Complete Works" were published during her lifetime. In 1880, her children sold the rights to her literary estate for 125,000 Francs (equivalent to 36 kg worth of gold, or 1.3 million dollars in 2015 USD). ... (wikipedia.org)
