Representations of “la Parisienne” in a British Relocation Narrative
Representations of “la Parisienne” in a British Relocation Narrative

Summary/Abstract: This paper investigates an Englishman’s representations of French women, with particular focus on the portrayal of a Parisian lady, as revealed by a first-person narrative belonging to the relocation memoirs. Considered either as a “full-fledged genre”, under the name of literature of accommodation (E. C. Knox), or as a subgenre of travel literature, under the name of relocation narrative (L. A. Mastellotto), where Anglophone writers have lifestyle migrants relate their experience of settling in a French locale, these home-abroad books offer a window on the views held on the natives both before and after the narrators’ settlement in the country of their choice.While relying on the premise that no individual can be the absolute quintessence of the culture he lives in, our analysis retraces the dynamics of the traits creating the portrait of what makes a Parisienne be a Parisienne, as perceived by an Englishman in Paris.

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