The Devil’s Pool - George Sand (1845)

 

The Devil's Pool

“The Devil’s Pool” is a short novel by George Sand. The author is, however, neither English nor male, but the pen name for a French woman with the impressive name of Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin de Francueil. That name is so much more awesome than the bland George Sand, but the mid-nineteenth century was a man’s world and maybe this was a necessity. A quick read-up on Ms. De Francueil reveals a most remarkable woman whose story is probably a lot more interesting than this novel of her’s I have been reading.

The story is somewhere between fiction and ethnography. She writes about a farmer called Germain who at the age of 28 has lost his wife and is left with three small children, the oldest, Petit-Pierre maybe a handful of years old. While his parents-in-law, with whom he is working, help out with the children, they also urge him to take a new wife. To that end they have found a wealthy widow in a neighbouring village. Germain just has to go there and ask for her hand. Since he is going that way anyway, the 16-year-old Marie is coming along. She is the daughter and supporter of a poor elderly woman in the village and to support them both she has taken a position as shepherdess on a farm close by the estate of the widow. Enroute, they pick up Petit-Pierre who was so upset to be left alone, he decided to lay in wait by the road side.

The road takes them through a forest and they become miserably lost. In their predicament they get to know each other and Germain finds out that Marie is actually everything he is looking for and he becomes quite infatuated with the girl. Marie on the other hand is a bit creeped out by Germain’s age and sees him more as an uncle, so nothing comes of it.

The visit to the neighbouring village turns out to be quite a disaster. The widow is a vain woman surrounded by suitors and the farmer who hired Marie turns out to be a pig Mee-Too style, so both of them return in misery.

Surprise, surprise, they get married anyway, not that much of a spoiler and Sand/de Francueil spends the last third of the paltry 65 pages describing the wedding.

The ride to find a wife she claims to be based on Germain’s own story, though somewhat fictionalized. The wedding part, though, she claims to have witnessed herself as taking place in her own village. The whole point of the story is to provide a window into the lives of peasants in rural France, partly to preserve it for posterity and partly to communicate the charm of these people she obviously cares about.

It is a charming little story. A romantic love-story about people who cannot get each other and then get each other after all. That part of it is as trivial as a Hallmark show. The interesting element, and likely the reason for it to be on the List, is the description of rural life. It is romantic and charming, but it is also brutal and hard. It is not as if these people are living in some dreamland, this is a place where people age early and die young and where the brutal demands of life force you to make unpleasant decisions. It is this combo that makes the story feel real and makes it interesting. Sand/de Francueil did not dream this up in a Paris boudoir, but is basing it on some real knowledge.

“The Devil’s Pool” is an easy and short read, and I guess there is not much more for her to tell here. It is fine for what it does, but likely too short to really make an impression.

What I would really like to read is a story about the author herself.