George Sand, Antisex Feminist
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21366221 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Andrew J Counter (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 56 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 281-304 |
| Publication date | 2023-08-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | NOVEL A Forum on Fiction (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0029-5132 • E-ISSN: 1945-8509 |
| Publisher | Duke University Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1215/00295132-10562871 |
| OpenAlex | W4386295840 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 17 |
George Sand's feminist novels of the 1830s often seem to have a “problem” with sex, or to view sex as a problem. In them, heterosexual sex often appears disempowering for women and therefore politically unpalatable; worse, heterosexual desire itself emerges as primordially marked by patriarchal constraints, predicated on the (self-)objectification and subjection of women. This article offers a speculative reading of Sand's early fictions as anticipating similar “antisex” attitudes in later twentieth-century feminism (the so-called antipornography feminism of the 1980s), and uses close readings of moments in Indiana, Mauprat, and Lélia to reflect on the renewed urgency—in the wake of #MeToo—of the sort of ethical questions raised by such feminism during the “sex wars.” If Sand is not, ultimately, an antisex feminist, her novels are nevertheless thought-provoking in their skepticism, or their pessimistic realism, about the possibility of a politically or ethically motivated reform of sex and desire
Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Epistemology · Feminism · George (robot) · Literature · Objectification · Pessimism · Realism · Skepticism · Sociology · Feminism, Gender, and Sexuality Studies · Gender Studies · History · LGBTQ Health, Identity, and Policy · Philosophy · Sexuality, Behavior, and Technology
| Highly cited | No |
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