An I for an Eye: Flora Tristan and Female Visual Allegory

Through a parallel reading of Flora Tristan's travel narrative, Les Pérégrinations d'une paria, and her novel, Méphis ou le prolétaire, both published in 1838, I suggest that allegory can have an empowering function for women. Tristan used allegory to the specific end of promoting the existence of courageous women. In both the novel and the travel narrative, real women's potential for leadership is linked to the visual image of an emancipated woman guiding humanity, an image inspired by the proliferation of allegorical representations of women in the 1830s. (KH)