Whittier College News Release

Whittier College
Office of Public Relations
13406 Philadelphia St.
P.O. Box 634
Whittier, CA 90608-0634

Media Contact: Dana Rakoczy at (562) 907-4974
Reference: 2004-05 #7

WHEN GUSTAVE MET GEORGE: CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN FLAUBERT AND SAND PRESENTED AT WHITTIER COLLEGE

Whittier, CA (October 6, 2004)—In celebration of National French Week (November 5-11), George Sand et Gustave Flaubert, Echanges Epistolaires will be presented in French by Paris-based Inter-Europe Spectacles-Compagnie Claude Beauclair, at 7 p.m. on Thursday, October 28, in the Ruth B. Shannon Center for the Performing Arts at Whittier College. This event is free and open to the public, however reservations are required. Reservations may be made by calling the Shannon Center Box Office at (562) 907-4203.

The presentation is part of Whittier College’s sixth annual celebration of National French Week. The focus of this year’s event is the bicentennial of the birth of George Sand, who met Gustave Flaubert for the first time at the Theatre de l’Odeon in Paris in 1857. He was 36 and had just published Madame Bovary; she was 53 and already a well-known author.

Born Aurore Dupin, Sand wrote almost a hundred novels and plays--including Marianne, Horace, Indiana and The Story of My Life--but it is her lifestyle that now attracts most attention: her cross-dressing, her cigars, her feminism, her bisexuality, her relationships with Chopin and other leading literary and artistic figures of her day.

Flaubert wrote Madame Bovary over the course of seven years and submitted it to the Revue de Paris, where it appeared in serial form in 1857. The French government charged Flaubert and his publisher with immorality, but both were acquitted and the eventually bound novel was well-received by the public.

Co-sponsors of George Sand et Gustave Flaubert, Echanges Epistolaires include the American Association of Teachers of French (AATF) and its Southern California chapter, Whittier College Office of the Dean of Faculty and the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, and The French Learning Website.

Located 18 miles east of Los Angeles, Whittier College is an independent, four-year college offering traditional liberal arts majors and strong pre-professional programs taught in the context of the liberal arts. Whittier Law School, which is accredited by the American Bar Association and is a member of the Association of American Law Schools, is located on a separate campus.