A Female Conquistador: The Contradictions of Colonial Discourse in the Countess of Merlin’s Viaje a La Habana

Follow me, dear viscountess, you whose originality has not lost any of its freshness and grace among Parisian elegance and the demands of the civilised life. Come to an unknown and remarkable place to behold the spectacle of customs that have never been described, nor hardly observed. Our hopes have not been sufficiently extinguished that they are not awakened anew by the sight of beings which still maintain all the charm of primitive society. (Merlin 1844b, 59)'