Obliterating the Myth of the Father: Processes of De-Crystallisation in George Sand’s 'Laura, Voyage dans le cristal' (original) (raw)

Abstract

This paper examines how George Sand’s magical realist text ‘Laura, Voyage dans le cristal’ (1864) deploys mythic and fantastic modes in order to subvert and dismantle patriarchal structures. This is illustrated through the use of two main theoretical strands. The first addresses the manifestation in the text of what Lacanian psychoanalysis has since called the ‘nom/non du père’, incarnated in this instance by the figure of Nasias, who is shown to be both maleficent and imaginary. This myth of the Father appears within the context of quasi-hallucinatory journeys into geodes, reflecting a nineteenth-century fascination with crystallisation explored by such figures as Baudelaire and Stendhal. The latter’s theories of desire as expressed in ‘De l’amour’ (1822) form the basis of this paper’s second theoretical strand, as it transpires that far from articulating the intensification of desire and the increased appeal of the desired object, Sand’s journeys into her imaginary crystalline world serve to reveal the trappings of male desire. A natural communion is encouraged instead, a return to nature in which both Man’s relationship to the natural world and man’s relationship to woman are redressed, and through the image of an Eden she forges a new system in which both man and woman are on an equal plane.

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