Pacific Muse

The Pacific Muse offers a fresh perspective on a seductively familiar topic: the colonial stereotype of the exotic Pacific island woman. By tracing the evolution of female primitivism from Western antiquity to twentieth-century Hollywood images, the book sheds new light on our understanding of how and why this ideal has persisted and the major role it has played in the colonization of Pacific peoples.While examining colonial culture in its many manifestations, from art, literature, and film to the journals of explorers and missionaries, O’Brien rereads not only the canonical texts of Pacific imperialism, but also lesser-known remnants of this cultural heritage with an eye to what they reveal about gender, sexuality, race, and femininity. Over its long history – from the famous (and much romanticized) settlement of Tahitian women and mutineers from the Bounty on Pitcairn Island in 1789 to the South Seas romantic tradition, Gauguin, and beach culture – notions of female primitivism changed in response to the ideological watersheds of Christianity, Enlightenment science, and race theories, as well as the development of democratic nation-states, modernity, and colonialism. The Pacific Muse shows the continuities and differences in representing colonized women across geographical regions and historical epochs and highlights the importance of sexualization and feminization in imperial enterprises.Including 37 illustrations of Pacific women from early etchings by shipboard artists to recent photographs, this panoramic view of gendered Pacific history is enlightening reading for cultural anthropologists, women’s and gender studies scholars, and historians of colonialism and the Pacific.

The Pacific Muse is highly recommended for anyone interested in Pacific history, the role of the indigenous colonial woman, and the truth behind the 'island girl' smile., O'Brien's book contributes to the burgeoning field of studies of gender and sexuality in Pacific Studies at the same time that it broadens the feminist critique of constructions of sexuality and gender… O'Brien allows us to glimpse many fascinating women, including Alice Henriette Handy, a Maori woman who was taken to America by her father, a New England whaling captain; and Maria de los Santos y Castro, a fifteen-year-old girl from Guam who was married to Matthew Mazarro, a Genoese four times her age., The Pacific Muse is a complex historical narrative and O'Brien wields a vast amount of material., O'Brien's panoramic study on the evolution of the Western notion of the exotic feminine in the Pacific is riveting..The book is essential reading because the Pacific Muse remains alive and well today—- precisely because she continues to serve this role., As a 'gender-focused world history', Patty O'Brien foregrounds the female body in her exploration of the colonial South Pacific. O'Brien takes an overlapping thematic and chronological approach, tracing the production of exotic femininity from its foundations in antiquity through the present day.. [it is] an engaging, wide-ranging, and insightful work, enhanced by the liberal inclusion of excellent images.

Patty O'Brien teaches history through the Center for Australian and New Zealand Studies in the School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University.