When the Tahitians undress the servant and discover that “he” is a woman, the reader sees the polarity between culture and nature. Tahiti represents the natural society, and Europe represents society after a superego has been hammered down in place over it. The binary opposition between the two entities suggests an ethical statement about the nature of culture and so builds a layer of meaning inside the story.
The central drive for colonization after the age of exploration was, ostensibly, to bring civilization and culture to parts of the world that had not yet developed it. The tripartite motto “God, Gold and Glory” told the story, although probably not in the order of importance that the colonists actually pursued. The servant in the story had taken the costume of a man because, in European mores, she would not have been able to take on the role that he did as a woman. The fact that the Tahitians rip off the servant’s clothes in order to do him a favor (Diderot, web) is an analogy for the colonies tearing aside the façade of the intentions of the powers and laying bare their actual intentions. After all, the Dutch East India Company was not a philanthropic organization; it was designed to find commodities in distant lands and then turn the inhabitants of those lands into captive markets. That is a lot more realistic and honest a presentation of the intentions of the colonists than any sort of missionary dream. Even though the Spanish ended up populating the Americas with priests, it was the hunger for gold – and power for the Church – that was really driving the bus.
The battle between nature and culture is an old one and goes back to the dawn of time. Humanity has spent millennia trying to paper over the dark and ugly parts of our primal selves. While there are some elements that might be better to overcome, such as the propensity to respond to provocation with violence, when we try to hide things like gender in order to gain acceptance, we shred our own inner dignity.
Works Cited
Diderot, Denis. “Supplement to Bougainville’s Voyage.” N.d. Web. 14 March 2016.
