ABSTRACT
In the patriarchal social environment, the father–son relationship constitutes the crucial conduit for the operation and transmission of power from dominant father to submissive son, the latter's submission indicating acceptance of the principle of power as part of the process of patriarchal maturation. In a system founded on the reproduction of the selfsame, the father is mirrored in the son, and it is only on this basis that the relationship becomes the conduit for the transmission of property, values, and the name. In both Andre and Le Peche de Monsieur Antoine, George Sand builds her narrative on the conflictual relations between father and son, and on the destructive effects of the patriarchal heritage of the paternal name. Her depiction of two dysfunctional father–son relationships thus turns the spotlight on the construction of hegemonic masculinity. Paternity emerges here as a troubled signifier of authority, ownership, legitimacy, and posterity, and the representational anxieties which it transmits resonate in both these novels.
