Graduation Date
Summer 2025
Document Type
Project
Program
Master of Arts degree with a major in English, emphasis in Applied English Studies
Program
English
Committee Chair Name
NIkola Hobbel
Committee Chair Affiliation
Cal Poly Humboldt Faculty or Staff
Second Committee Member Name
Joseph Dieme
Second Committee Member Affiliation
Cal Poly Humboldt Faculty or Staff
Third Committee Member Name
n/a
Fourth Committee Member Name
n/a
Fifth Committee Member Name
n/a
Sixth Committee Member Name
n/a
Keywords
Anti-Slavery, Créolité, Postcolonial Theory, French Revolution, Code Noir, Subaltern Voices, Racial Ambiguity, Colonial Oppression, Hybridity
Subject Categories
English
Abstract
George Sand’s Indiana (1832), often misread as a romance, critiques France’s failure to uphold Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité—freedom, equality, and unity—by excluding people of color, women, and peasants during its shift from the Ancien Régime’s monarchy to the democratic Nouveau Régime, now in its Fifth Republic. This study surveys the French literary canon through textual analysis, engaging writers like La Fontaine, Molière, Marivaux, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Danton, Duras, and Dracius. While analyzing these authors, this study also investigates Sir Ralph Brown’s transformational monologue as well as the relationship between Hamlet’s Ophelia and the Amistad voyage, where hundreds of souls were thrown overboard due to lack of proper provisioning of food. Sand joins England and France’s human rights conversations which reflect modern U.S. struggles with wealth gaps and lack of representation under systems echoing monarchical rule. Sand exposes colonial slavery’s brutality; hundreds of thousands dead, families lost, people of color treated as savages, discarded or shot without any conscience of humanity. Sand critiques racial hierarchies that persisted despite laws granting rights. Indiana urges a collective will, a national identity of the people, resonating with global fights for justice, prescribing a plan to overcome.
Citation Style
MLA
Recommended Citation
Lodes, Jemimah "Miah" Dawn, "Hope transforms: an analysis of the novel Indiana" (2025). Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects. 2318.
https://digitalcommons.humboldt.edu/etd/2318