George Sand's Lélia and the Tragedy of Dualism

George Sand's Lélia (1833), considered for so long as a rambling, repetitious outpouring of rhetoric, is in fact a coherent fiction, which both describes and evaluates one of the basic psychological and metaphysical postulates of the Romantics: their dualistic view of existence. In true Romantic fashion, the major characters in Lélia have split psyches and in most cases reject "base" material values in favor of lofty "spiritual" ones. But their efforts fail, because repressing one's earthy, sexual side (Lélia herself), or, in the case of the male characters, deifying either themselves or the heroine, eventually leads to tragedy in the form of sterility, impotence, madness, or death. (RBG)