George Sand and the Nineteenth-century Russian Love-triangle Novels

"In discussing love-triangle novels, the author focuses on three character types that comprise the "menage a trois": the benevolent husband, the strong "new" woman, and the superfluous man. Sand's epistolary novel, Jacques, features the character type of the forgiving, enlightened spouse whose wife takes a lover. Jacques established a literary prototype emulated by several of nineteenth-century Russia's best read and most persuasive thinkers." "Mauprat features Edmee, a self-actualizing "woman as hero" protagonist. Here the notion of "fiction of relationship" emerges, as male Russian authors created tragic, idealized woman characters who could never really live up to the "terrible perfection" with which they were endowed." "The superfluous man constitutes the third character type in the love triangle featured in so many of Sand's novels and incorporated into many Russian works. Eidelman examines Sand's Horace and reviews Russian borrowings in Aleksandr Herzen's Who is to Blame?, in Ivan Goncharov's A Common Story, and in Ivan Turgenev's Rudin." "The progression of the feminist movement in Russia is examined, noting its distinctions from comparable organizations in Western Europe."--BOOK JACKET.