Paul et Virginie

[1] It records the fate of a child of nature corrupted by the artificial sentimentality of the French upper classes in the late eighteenth century.

[2] Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's novel criticizes the social class divisions found in eighteenth-century French society.

He was a friend of Mahé de La Bourdonnais, the governor of Mauritius, who appears in the novel providing training and encouragement for the island's natives.

One critic noted that Bernadin de Saint-Pierre "admired the forethought which ensured that dark-coloured fleas should be conspicuous on white skin", believing "that the earth was designed for man’s terrestrial happiness and convenience".

[citation needed] Thomas Carlyle in The French Revolution: A History, wrote: "[It is a novel in which] there rises melodiously, as it were, the wail of a moribund world: everywhere wholesome Nature in unequal conflict with diseased, perfidious art; cannot escape from it in the lowest hut, in the remotest island of the sea.