An English Lady in the French Colonies, Part V

As I mentioned in the first article in this series, many recent scholars have attempted to draw distinctions between travel writers and in particular have increasingly used the category of gender in their analyses of travel writing. Women, it is argued, wrote fundamentally differently from men in several ways. [1] They, it is argued, were often seen to be more inclusive in their subject matter and often wrote about women and other groups typically ignored by male travel writers. In addition, they described the peoples they visited with much more empathy than men, writing more often about them as individuals rather than as archetypal examples of a race. Furthermore, though usually sharing many of the same racial stereotypes and prejudices as male travel writers, women travel writers did not make nearly as many racial generalizations as did men. [2]

Gabrielle Vassal's travel writings complicate things a great deal. Not only are they quite racist and stereotypical, but she also does not show much empathy for the peoples she visits. Nor does she describe them much as individuals. Furthermore, like male travel writers, but at odds with many female travel writers, she ranks the "races," with the Chinese being more advanced and civilized than the Annamese, and both being dramatically more than the Congolese. [3]

These inconsistencies can mean either of two things. Either the overriding historiography (or commonly agreed upon narrative) is somewhat or totally inaccurate, or Gabrielle Vassal was dramatically different from most other female travel writers of the time. Or perhaps, both are true. But, without any autobiography or biography, it is almost impossible to explain why she wrote so differently from other female travel writers. Aside from these three travelogues, she did not write or publish any other books, and aside from a brief, two paragraph bibliographic mention of her, which includes the date she died (1959), there is no mention of her in any of the secondary literature on this subject. [4] Perhaps just as surprising, we know even less about her husband, a somewhat important colonial official!

Nevertheless, there are some questions that one can ask that may shed some light on why she wrote in a different fashion than most other women. Perhaps as a British traveler writing about French colonies or areas that were under heavy French influence such as southern China, she was more fervently imperialist than if she were French or of some other nationality. Though she does not mention any family connection or link to the British Empire, and though she does not even mention the Empire in any of her writings, from her descriptions of African and Vietnamese "backwardness" it is clear that she totally believed in the "civilizing mission," and in the European need to stay indefinitely. The French believed more in the ability for a "benighted" native to "see the light," and to become civilized. The British did not commonly subscribe to this belief. [5] Maybe her not being French can also help explain her lack of any belief in native virtue, and thus having the inability to write about Annamese, Yunnanese or Congolese peoples as individuals rather than groups. But perhaps there are no real answers, aside from the admittedly unsatisfactory one that perhaps Gabrielle Vassal was just unusually more racist than her peers and more liberated from gender restrictions than fellow women for reasons that remain unclear and unexplained because of the limited evidence that is available.

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