SOURCE: "Lelia" in Family Romances: George Sand's Early Novels, Indiana University Press, 1987, pp. 95-114.

In the following excerpt, Crecelius focuses on Lélia, a novel that has evoked extreme reactions from critics. According to Crecelius, these sharp differences are caused by the varied generic traditions that the novel draws upon to explore the dark side of Sand's imagination.

Both Indiana and Valentine firmly established Sand's reputation as a writer. The beauty of Sand's prose was hailed, and her criticisms of men, marriage, and society, tolerantly approved. She was, after all, a member of the iconoclastic romantic generation that had brought new and daring themes to French literature. Lélia received a very different reception from that of the first two works. The reaction was sharply mixed, with Capo de Feuillide writing a particularly vituperative attack on the novel that led Sand's friend Gustave Planche to fight a duel...