ABSTRACT
This chapter considers how, in An Outcast of the Islands and Almayers Folly, Mrs Willems and Mrs Almayer stage their own ambiguous performances to protest at their treatment by their 'white masters,' their husbands, Joanna Willems and Almayer. It examines the nature of Aissa's performance in An Outcast of the Islands and ends by suggesting that Aissa's own performance is less successful in obtaining mastery than that of the other two women. Both Mrs Almayer and Mrs Willems live in Malay society. However, whilst Mrs Almayer is a Malay woman, Mrs Willems is of mixed race. The idea of women's performances being associated with death is echoed in Almayer's Folly, where the female gaze – or 'look' – is described as 'a woman's most terrible weapon' and, in An Outcast of the Islands, it is this performance of the 'look' that Aissa enacts in her attempts to attract Willems.
