“Une voiture peut en cacher une autre”: Twentieth-Century Women Writers Read George Sand

The francophile writer Edith Wharton spent no small amount of time motoring around France in the early twentieth century. As the equally francophile writer Julian Barnes informs us, Wharton also had a habit of naming her cars after French writers. One summer when Wharton had been reading a biography of George Sand, she had not one, but two cars: “we had a large showy car which always started off brilliantly and then broke down at the first hill, and this we christened ‘Alfred de Musset,’ while the small but indefatigable motor which subsequently replaced ‘Alfred’ was naturally named ‘George.’” ¹ As is often the case in literary history, the “large” and “showy” seems at first “brilliant” and gets all the attention, but, as the road safety slogan reminds us, “une voiture peut en cacher une autre”—one car may obscure the view of another. It certainly seems true that in literary history, the “brilliant” Alfred de Musset has obscured the more “indefatigable” George Sand. Partly, then, this article is about how previously obscured objects may suddenly come into view, but it is also about how one reading may obscure another, and the need for vigilance in not assuming that the first thing that hoves into view is the only thing.