Law 25: Re-Create Yourself

The 48 Laws Of Power Summary Series

Judgement

“Do not accept the roles that society foists on you. Re-create yourself by forging a new identity, one that commands attention and never bores the audience. Be the master of your own image rather than letting others define it for you. Incorporate dramatic devices into your public gestures and actions — your power will be enhanced and your character will seem larger than life.”

Observance Of The Law II

In 1831 a young woman named Aurore Dupin Dudevant left her husband and family to move to Paris. She wanted to be a writer; marriage, she felt, was worse then prison. Soon after Dudevant had to confront harsh realities. That to have any degree of freedom in Paris you had to have money. For a women, money could only come through marriage or prostitution.

No women had ever come close to making a living by writing. When Dudevant first showed her writing to an editor he told her, “You should make babies, Madame, not literature.” She had an extremely challenging path ahead of her if she was going to make it. Dudevant decided that to excel and win at this game she would play the part of a man. About a year later a publisher accepted Dudevant’s first major novel, Indiana.

She had chosen to publish it under a pseudonym, “George Sand”. She had always found men’s shirts and riding breeches more comfortable; now, as a public figure, she exaggerated the image. She added men’s coats and heavy boots to her wardrobe. She smoked cigars and in conversation expressed herself like a man. This strange “male/female” writer fascinated the public, and unlike other women writers, Sand found herself accepted…