3. Castaways and Colonialism: Dislocating Cultural Encounter in The Female American (1767)

Studies in the English‐language Robinsonade at the Crusoe tercentenary

“…In 2016, a special issue of Women's Studies was dedicated entirely to this novel, addressing a wide array of topics, including ‘genre convention, the role of the domestic sphere, identity construction, religious conversion, and social justice‘(Collins‐Frohlich & MacNeil, 2016, p. 2). The progressive ideology of the text has also been problematized, if not questioned, by Chloe Wigston Smith (2017) and Przemysław Uściński (2020), who point to the inevitable imperial undertones of the novel, despite its counter‐hegemonic elements, while Emelia Abbé (2019), applying the concept of it‐narrative to the novel's representation of ‘Indians’, has made an even stronger claim for this work's colonial message.…”