The French writer George Sand (1804–1876) wrote bestsellers about the failure of love and the struggle of women for recognition. In real life she fought for a socialist republic.
Aurore Dupin, as she was actually called, had published a number of socially critical novels under her stage name since the 1830s, which she soon made very well known. In keeping with her pseudonym, she appeared publicly in men’s clothes. She surrounded herself with a circle of writers and artists, including Heinrich Heine and the painter Eugène Delacroix, and her numerous lovers also had good names, for example Frédéric Chopin.
When in February 1848 a revolution supported by the disappointed bourgeoisie, but also by dissatisfied workers, swept the so-called citizen king Louis-Philippe of Orléans from his throne, it was on fire for the now proclaimed republic. At last the time seemed to have come to overcome the existing class order and to bring about more justice in the country. But only a few months later the tide turned: in the general election for the constituent assembly in April, the left was defeated – conservatives and moderate liberals set the tone. The Parisian workers rose against this, especially since the measures that had just started to create jobs were canceled without replacement. The June uprising was bloodily suppressed by the National Guard. This also shattered George Sand’s socialist hopes.
Sand was skeptical of the government led by Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte as president since December 1848. And when the nephew of Emperor Napoleon I became Napoleon III in a coup in 1851. rose to become a monarch, she saw her fears confirmed. Her political goals had failed, and she also had to reorient herself as a writer.
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