Déesse sexualisée et/ou victime? La femme hindoue entre les colonialismes anglais et français en Inde

Both the British (1608–1947) and the French (1664–1954) states have a long history of involvement in India and both created an equality of oppression, applying the same type of orientalistic interpretation to women as they did to men. However, on occasions, the Hindu woman becomes an important vector in the colonizers' attempts to change cultural practices such as suttee (widow burning). This article uses Francophone sources (drama, novels and letters from missionaries) to track and analyse the male representations of the Hindu woman in (and outside) suttee. It concludes (applying Spivak) that the lack of self-representation for the indigenous woman meant her representation by others was a key colonial battlefield. Due to the failure of dreams of empire, Francophone writers display a fantasizing discourse about the French établissements, their inhabitants and also their women. With increasing British pan-Indian dominance after 1761, these writers used the colonised woman – colonized by the British – to implicitly criticize British rule (Jules Verne) and to elaborate a universal feminine voice and to interrogate gender in history (Hélène Cixous).