The Devil's Pool
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First published in 1846, George Sand’s The Devil’s Pool (La Mare au diable) is a tender pastoral novella set amid the fields and villages of rural Berry, the French countryside Sand knew intimately. Germain, a widowed farmer with three children, is persuaded to seek a new wife and sets out on a journey with the young Marie, a shepherdess travelling to take up work elsewhere, and his little son Petit-Pierre. As night falls and their journey leads them through unfamiliar country, the encounter between these two very different adults begins to open the possibility of an unexpected affection.
Written with an unhurried grace and a deep respect for rural life, the novella considers grief, companionship, work and the quiet dignity of ordinary people. Sand offers an ideal of love grounded not in social ambition or romantic fantasy but in mutual kindness and shared responsibility, while gently challenging the prejudices surrounding class and marriage. Part of her celebrated series of pastoral works, The Devil’s Pool reveals a writer attentive to the beauty of everyday existence and to the emotional richness of lives often overlooked by literature.
From the book
“I have seen, I have felt the beautiful in the simple, but to see and to depict are two different things!”
— George Sand, The Devil’s Pool
On The Devil’s Pool
“La Mare au Diable, George Sand’s first tale of exclusively peasant-life, is usually considered her masterpiece in this genre.”
— George Sand, by Bertha Thomas