The Allure of Tahiti, Gender in late eighteenth-century French texts on the Pacific

Abstract

How do eighteenth-century French travelogues about the Pacific represent indigenous women? What does this tell us about contemporary notions of femininity? Does it show the influence of the Enlightenment and early Romanticist debate on the nature of the sexes? Or is it based on early modern standards of womanhood? These questions negotiate a textual analysis of Bougainville’s Voyage autour du monde and Diderot’s influential Supplément to this travelogue. The analysis of the descriptions of ‘first contact’ between the French and the Tahitians, especially those of the contribution of women to these encounters, will provide answers