The details vary.

And some of the variations tell us a great deal about what sixteenth-century Europe wanted to make of a story like this.

What The Story Reveals About Its Own Era

Marguerite de la Rocque’s story survived into the historical record not simply because it happened, but because people found it worth telling.

Understanding why it was found worth telling — and what aspects were emphasized or altered in different tellings — is itself revealing.

The story arrived in the French literary world at a moment when French colonial ambitions were generating considerable anxiety and fascination, and when the figure of the isolated individual — particularly the isolated woman — was a productive site of moral and spiritual reflection.