Talk:Jeanne Baret

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This article was automatically assessed because at least one article was rated and this bot brought all the other ratings up to at least that level. BetacommandBot 04:01, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Transgender?

Does Mlle. Baré actually qualify as a transsexual or even a crossdresser? From the article, it seems that she dressed as a man for specific reasons (hiding from the authorities, searching for adventure, etc.). Cranston Lamont (talk) 14:20, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Indeed. Also, the Bougainville article says she was the botanist's mistress. Is there any evidence for that? If so, it should certainly be mentioned in this article; if not, we should delete it from the Bougainville article. 65.213.77.129 (talk) 13:35, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

STOP IT! She was not trans! Why do so many people want to make these extraordinary women men....they weren't men! 47.157.97.217 (talk) 02:34, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

Sources

I've recently read both the Glynis Ridley and John Dunmore biographies of Baret. I have to say that the Ridley "biography" cannot be taken as a reliable source; as noted in reviews like this one from the Wall Street Journal or this one from amazon.com, Ridley constructs a story that is very much based on speculation, and builds layer after layer of guesswork and imagination that seems to have no basis in documented historical fact. OTOH, because her version of events has been so widely reported by other media sources, it does not seem that the article can totally ignore it, either.

The Dunmore biography seems to stick much closer to the historical record. There's also a third biography in French by Henriette Dussourd that I have not tried to locate yet (I am not sure my French is up to a critical reading of a scholarly work, to tell the truth).

I have been working on expanding the article. The approach I have taken with regard to the conflicting versions of events has been to stick with the facts that Dunmore and Ridley agree upon as much as possible, and to leave out anything that seems to be a product of Ridley's imagination alone. I'll list a few such things here:

• Ridley asserts that Baret was a traditional "herb woman", and as such was Commerson's teacher in practical field botany rather than his pupil (p 16-20). There seems to be no historical documentation or independent confirmation of this at all. Ridley claims that an anonymous notebook containing a list of medicinal plants found among Commerson's papers but not in his handwriting is Baret's work, although it seems nobody has compared the writing to Baret's, and I don't know if Baret even left enough samples of her handwriting for comparison. Ridley writes, "One imagines her herb woman's notebook as a lover's gift to Commerson...." (p 39) and then goes on to treat this as an established fact in subsequent discussion. It's also not clear to me whether Ridley uses her theory about this notebook to justify her theory that Baret was an herbalist, or vice versa. Ridley further goes on to claim that Baret, not Commerson, was the true discoverer of Bougainvillea, with an elaborate story of her excitement at finding a plant that clearly had medicinal properties (p 96-106). All of this seems like extremely doubtful conjecture to me.

• Ridley interprets Vivés's account of the "examination" on New Ireland as evidence that Baret was gang-raped by the crew. She claims that Bougainville's well-known account of the incident on Tahiti was a fabrication inserted into his journal well after the fact to explain Baret's presence while covering up the less palatable "true" story. Moreover, she implies that Bougainville also fabricated the story of the crewman who became seriously ill after being bitten by a sea serpent the same day that Baret was allegedly attacked, and that Baret was instead the patient whom Commerson was forced to keep sedated with opiates for weeks afterwards (p 185-195).

• Ridley also states definitively that Baret became pregnant as a result of the alleged gang-rape (p 204) and cites the later documented existence of a man named Bonnefoy on Mauritius as "compelling evidence" that she gave birth there (p 212-214). The connection seems pretty tenuous to me.

• Ridley also fantasizes a great deal about Baret's emotional state, her feelings for Commerson, and such like. To be fair, Dunmore does some of this too (notably on p 37-38, where he presents an imaginary dialog explaining how they might have hatched the plan for Baret to disguise herself). I don't think any of this is encyclopedic so I've left it out of the article. Ridley and Dunmore agree that Commerson was the father of Baret's child and all the facts point to them having a long-standing relationship of some sort; I don't think we need to speculate further.

There are still a few more things I'd like to expand on in the article, such as more discussion of her actual role and accomplishments on the expedition as Commerson's assistant. So, it's still a work in progress at this point. Dr.frog (talk) 21:33, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Baret or Barret

if "she always signed her name Barret" why is Baret used throughout this article? --2607:FEA8:D5DF:1AF0:4831:3A33:8593:B902 (talk) 12:56, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

"voyage of circumnavigation"

this implies one trip, no matter how long. Clearly the time in Mauritius was not simply a layover. She travelled around the world, but why call her life a "voyage of circumnavigation"? --2607:FEA8:D5DF:1AF0:4831:3A33:8593:B902 (talk) 12:58, 27 July 2020 (UTC)