History and architectural symbolism: reading of the Compagnon du Tour de France of George Sand

This article examines the symbolic treatment of architecture in Le Compagnon du Tour de France, a historical novel by George Sand published in 1840. The novelist creates an architectural space which allows us to read the political history of her age and the social conflicts within it. Thus, the castle of the Villepreux family appears not as a solid block but as a torn edifice where different time-frames intertwine. It evokes the past through its nature as a ruin, it suggests the present through the restoration of the chapel, and it announces the future through its building sites. Inhabited by socially different characters, the manor becomes a place which reflects the complex relations between social classes.