Marilyn Yalom (Essay Date 1985)

SOURCE: Yalom, Marilyn. "Towards a History of Female Adolescence: The Contribution of George Sand." In George Sand: Collected Essays, edited by Janis Glasgow, pp. 204-15. Troy, N.Y.: Whitson, 1985.

In the following essay, Yalom examines Sand's contribution to a history of female adolescence, concentrating particularly on the author's autobiography and comparing it with works by other women writers.

When the history of female adolescence is written, it will be seen that the writing of George Sand offers a store of portraits and insights unparalleled in her time and place. Both in her autobiographical and fictive works, Sand proved that adolescence was a subject worthy of observation and a "source of poetry."¹ Like her master Rousseau a century earlier, she both excoriated the corrupted state of adolescence among her contemporaries and immortalized the adolescent soul in its physical restlessness, spiritual awakening, and fitful...