Hayden channeled my inner-nerd

Like Hayden, I am not a lit person. But, in languages it's a common path for course selections. In grad school I took this one course entitled Femme écrivain et sa vie, or The Woman Writer and her life. The course was based mostly on autobiography of Francophone woman writers. I thought never, ever would I pick up and read anything again by George Sand...until Hayden's demo. There was this one little mention of George Sand in "Shakespeare's Sister" that sparked my interest. It got me to thinking about what I did know about George Sand: the fact she dressed in male clothing when she visited Paris, which offered her access to meetings only attended by men; the fact she smoked a pipe; the fact she left her children in the care of her mother at their estate in Nohant so she could attend social gatherings of other period writers, like Flaubert, Musset. So, yesterday I reread parts of her autobiography, Histoire de ma vie (The Story of my Life), something I didn't think I would ever do, ever again. But, I feel richer today because of it. In her autobiography, she does talk about writing in a man's world and the social stigmas attached to being a femme écrivain. Have a looksie.