The novel centers on an unhappy marriage between a retired soldier, aged 35 (Jacques), and his young teenaged bride, Fernanade.
Faced with no choice but to challenge Octave to a duel or concede the marriage, Jacques can find no suitable alternative.
However, Sand also highlights the social aspects of this problem by emphasizing the youth of Ferndande, who is married by her family as a teenager, and the impossibility of the couple's divorcing under Napoleonic law.
Like many of Sand's novels, Jacques argued in favor of the education and independence of 19th century women and against a view of marriage in which the husband dominated the wife legally.
Unlike her prior novels, Jacques depicts misunderstandings in a marriage not arranged out of convenience but originally based on love.