Book excerpt: In Gender in the Fiction of George Sand, Françoise Massardier-Kenney argues that the major nineteenth-century French writer George Sand articulates in her novels a complex and extremely modern conception of gender, questioning prevalent patriarchal modes of discourse and redefining masculinity and femininity. Through the analysis of a representative sample of Sand's works (Indiana, Jacques, La dernière Aldini, Jeanne, Horace, Valv'dre, Melle la Quintinie, Gabriel, Lucrezia Floriana, and Nanon), Massardier-Kenney uncovers the themes and strategies used by Sand to challenge essentializing and negative representations of women. Gender in the Fiction of George Sand demonstrates the centrality of Sand's pioneering exploration of the construction of gender. This original study will be of interest to scholars of nineteenth-century French literature and culture, women's literature, and gender studies.