Reading Order
The Journeyman JoinerLe Compagnon du tour de France Reading Order
Le Compagnon du tour de France (The Journeyman Joiner, 1840) by George Sand is the novel that most directly expresses her early socialist politics — a story about Pierre Huguenin, a journeyman carpenter in the tradition of the compagnonnage (the medieval guild system of journeyman craftsmen), who falls in love with the aristocratic Yseult de Villepreux. The novel is important for several reasons: it is one of the first French novels to make a working-class man a dignified protagonist with an inner life fully equal to the aristocratic characters surrounding him; it is a direct engagement with the compagnonnage, the fraternal system of journeyman trade guilds that was one of the most important structures of working-class self-organization in pre-industrial France; and it is Sand's clearest fictional argument for the social position she would articulate in the 1848 political essays, that the dignity of labor is the foundation of the democratic society that the Revolution promised. Sand wrote the novel after her engagement with the Saint-Simonian and early socialist movements, and the novel's portrait of Pierre Huguenin is partly a response to the Saint-Simonian argument that the working class needed middle-class leaders — Sand's Pierre is his own leader, educated and self-possessed without any aristocratic patrons.
Where to start
Le Compagnon du tour de France (1840) — the novel is moderate length (about 300 pages) and the most difficult of Sand's major novels to find in English; there is an old translation as The Journeyman Joiner and some modern reprints. The French Classiques Garnier edition is the best text. Read after Indiana (1832) and before Consuelo (1842–43) to trace the development of Sand's social thought from feminist critique to socialist utopianism.
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Le Compagnon du tour de France (The Journeyman Joiner)
George Sand·1840·Published 1840. The compagnonnage was a system of journeyman trade associations that had existed since the medieval guild period and remained active in the first half of the nineteenth century; their members traveled from town to town learning their trade, organized in secret fraternal brotherhoods. Sand's research into the compagnonnage is one of the most unusual aspects of the novel.
The Journeyman Joiner — Frequently Asked Questions
What is the compagnonnage?
The compagnonnage (the journeyman system, from compagnon, journeyman or companion) was a system of trade fraternities in France that existed from the medieval period through the nineteenth century and in modified form to the present day. The system required journeymen in skilled trades (carpentry, masonry, locksmithing, shoemaking, and others) to travel from town to town learning their craft under master craftsmen, organized in secret fraternal brotherhoods with their own rituals, songs, symbols, and systems of mutual aid. The compagnonnage was simultaneously a trade education system, a labor organization, and a kind of Masonic fraternity; its members identified with legendary founding figures (Jacques de Molay, Master Jacques, and the Maître du Devoir) and their movements across France were structured by the 'tour de France' — the traditional circuit of cities where each trade had its headquarters. Sand researched the compagnonnage carefully for the novel and her portrait of Pierre Huguenin's life within the system is historically accurate; she was also interested in the compagnonnage as an existing model of working-class solidarity and self-organization at a moment when the labor movement had no other institutional forms. The novel is therefore both a work of fiction and a documentary of a form of working-class culture that was already beginning to decline in the face of industrialization.
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