Romanticism and George Sand's "Indiana"

George Sand's Indiana, is a text that represents Romantic sentiments in France at the time. Sand was independent, individual, and rebellious, she believed in reform more than revolution. This book gives insight into her own personal political thoughts and ideas at the time. It also has its own Byronic hero, a romantic favorite in literature. This book is more than just a read, it is also an historical and political text that lets you read into the thoughts and ideas of Romantic authors in Europe.

The Byronic hero in literature is named after Lord Byron and his main protagonist in his poem Childe Harold. The Byronic hero was established during the Romantic period in art and literature as an anti-hero; he is supposed to represent the antithesis of the ideal, chivalrous hero of the time. This hero is dark, mysterious, and brooding. He often harbors the torturing memory of an enormous, nameless guilt that drives him toward an inevitable doom. He holds himself detached and sees himself as superior in his passions and powers compared to society and humanity, whom he regards with disdain. He stubbornly pursues his own ends according to his self-generated moral code, against all opposition. He also gains an attraction from the other characters because it involves their confusion at his obliviousness to ordinary human concerns. Byronic heroes in literature often have the following characteristics: passionate, unrepentant, wandering, isolated, attractive, and self-reliant.

In Indiana, Sir Ralph Brown is George Sand's Byronic hero. He is a passive, intelligent man that has shut himself off from society because he found that world to be harsh and cruel to him. His one motivation and goal in life is to watch over the weak...

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...as weak, unable, and a prisoner under her husband's command. She finds strength within herself after the scandal of her affair with de Ramiere. At this point she is no longer concerned with what is proper and even finds the strength to leave her husband and go to the place where she feels she will find happiness, uncaring about the scandal and gossip that would arise. Indiana is a bold text in the sense that this was looking down on the way the culture was and revolutionary for women.

Byronic Hero- characteristics and history

http://www.comune.livorno.it/isc/byronic_hero_.htm

Stromberg readings

Romantic idea

Stromberg and Winders readings

George Sand

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