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It is worth reading for anyone who feels they do not know what they want to do with their lives!
Later, I have begun to think of this motif as the essence of the Christianity. A lady in the Old Testament tells that she cannot estimate the figure of her lover as other girls do, because she doesn't love him for its sake, but love his invisible things like his heart.
I have learned the spiritual love from this novel. I'd advise the young people to read it.
Lelia was Sand's third novel, and her most controversial when published. It is quite difficult to read -- more like a series of prose poems than a novel, really. But it is certainly worth the effort. Not only is Sand a true artist and poet, but she is a sharp proto-feminist critic; in fact, many of her critiques of marriage and the treatment of women are still completely relevent today.
Lelia tells the story of a woman of towering intellect who is unable to feel physical passion (she refers to herself as "impotent"). She feels great passion for art, poetry, and Nature, but she is unable to consummate her relationship with the young poet Stenio. Much of the novel consists of the letter written between Lelia and Stenio, so we see Lelia both through the lens of the male gaze (the men constantly dichotomize her into angel/demon, mother/whore) and through her own eyes. The center of the novel deals with Lelia's relationship to her sister, the courtesan Pulcherie (based on Sand's romantic relationship with the actress Marie Dorval). At the heart of the novel is a description of Pulcherie looking upon the sleeping Lelia as a young girl and learning for the first time the power of love and life. It is, in my opinion, one of Sand's finest passages and absolutely not to be missed by anyone interested in Sand, women's European literature, or lesbian literature.
Lelia is an emotially turbulant novel; nowhere do we find the harmonious, transcendant union between man and woman that characterizes much of Sand's other work. Lelia stands out as a Sandian oddity because of the time in Sand's life in which it was written. Although it's difficult to find a copy, I highly recommend getting it any way you can. It is the job of feminist readers and critics to get Sand back into the canon.