Nanon de George Sand, ou le roman de formation d’une paysanne

Nanon (1872) is a threefold exception to the formative novel, which has mainly male and bourgeois heroes and which, in nineteenth-century France, takes forms characterised by disappointment. On the contrary, Sand portrays here a female character belonging to the peasantry, and in relation to the morphology of this sub-genre, the trajectory of her illiterate girl who, in the turmoil of 1789, learns to read, becomes a landowner and marries an aristocrat without ever giving up her country cornette, is happy and exemplary. This article attempts to identify what type of socialisation Sand proposes to women in relation to the experience of history, of work, and of the possibilities of reaching the post-revolutionary nation.