Tableau and coup-de-theatre -: The pathetic in George!Sand's 'Adriani'

At a time when she was writing simultaneously for the novel and for the theatre in order to create melodramatic stories, George Sand used in her novel Adriani (1853) the techniques of the tableau and the coup de theatre, which she borrowed from the genre of serious drama invented by Diderot and perfected by Sedaine. Influenced for a time by the aesthetic of pathos which was popular with the audiences of the Second Empire, Sand problematized its ideological implications, especially with regard to the character of the female mourner. Juxtaposing several modes of representation within the novel's framework, Sand reproduced their own distinctive codes before proposing another type of fictional outcome for the female sufferer.