Missionary Christianity and Culture in Robert Louis Stevenson's "The Beach of Falesá"

Abstract

ABSTRACT:This essay offers a Christian perspective on social relationships in Robert Louis Stevenson's short story "The Beach of Falesá," often described as a realist work. The essay focuses on missionary interactions with traders and Pacific Islanders. By taking seriously religious characters, themes, and actions, it shows that Christian morality shapes daily and communal life in the imagined community of Falesá. In this way, the story can also be considered as Stevenson's meditation on how the social and cultural landscape of the Pacific had begun to shape his own complex religious thought.