A Mind of Her Own

George sand came into the world in 1832. This new person did not arrive as human usually do, as tiny, helpless, speechless object. Instead, George sand arrived as fully formed and eloquent adult of twenty eight, wearing trousers, and tie and atop hat. George sand possessed no ancestors and was the offspring of no parents, not even a man, despite his name George sand was the unique personality which a gifted Frenchwoman called aurora dupin invented for herself when she published her first novel.

She chose to disguise herself with the name and clothes of a man for a compelling reason. Like other women of her day, aurora dupin had been born in a prison. The bars were invisible. They were made not of iron prejudice. The gates were heavily guarded by age long tradition. For the poorer inmates of this social prison existence was often as a life sentence of drudgery in peasant huts and in the field of wealthy landowners but the more well to do women were often no less condemned they were sentenced to empty hours bent over embroideries used to decorate their houses. These women were hardly more than decoration themselves. There seemed no escape a different and richer life

Yet with most innocent of devices pen and paper and paper and pseudonym of a man-Aurora Dupin walked past the unsuspecting guardian of tradition and out through the buried gates forever. The story of a life is the story of her imprisonment, of her escape, and of a world she discovered 'on the outside' and made her own.
This world was the France of men of genius-of honorede Balzac, etc. all of these men were her close friends. She was considered their peer. She became one of the most widely read and influential writers of her day, and an outstanding representative of her time in literature.

In the forefront of the struggles for freedom, George sand played unique role. And the area of women rights she championed ideas which were far ahead of her time. France was the country from which she drew inspiration for the formidable body of writing which led her contemporaries to call her the great women of the century. She wrote over one hundred volumes of novels and plays memoirs.

George sand emerged as something more than French, something more than a writer. Her achievements are proving that the mind has no gender. She herself has become a symbol of the independent spirit that lies hidden perhaps in every man-and every woman.

By Edward Ombaka Adeny