Survival, Storytelling, and the Reimagining of History : Marguerite de Roberval
by Angie Cope
Survival stories have long captured the human imagination, and for me, they hold a special appeal by helping me connect story telling with materials from the AGS Library. My interest in survival narratives began about fifteen years ago with Tony Horwitz’s Blue Latitudes, a modern retelling of Captain James Cook’s voyages. Horwitz sailed in a replica of Cook’s ship, the H.M. Endeavour, retracing the explorer’s journeys across the Pacific Ocean and to Australia. By pairing his contemporary experiences with Cook’s own hardships, Horwitz provided a helpful perspective on the AGSL’s holdings—most notably, Cook’s hand-drawn manuscript maps of the southeastern coast of Australia.
Recently, I have been drawn to another survival narrative, Allegra Goodman’s Isola, which is based on the astonishing true story of Marguerite de la Rocque, a French noblewoman marooned in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence in 1542. Marguerite, orphaned but heir to a fortune, was placed under the guardianship of her uncle, Jean-François de Roberval. He squandered Marguerite’s inheritance to such an extent that he could no longer maintain a home for himself and Marguerite in France. After securing funds from the king for an expedition to New France he compelled Marguerite to accompany him. During the voyage, she fell in love with his secretary. Roberval was enraged by the affair and exiled her, along with her lover and her nurse, Damienne, on a desolate island later referred to as the “Isle of Demons.” Marguerite endured more than two and a half years of isolation and privation before she was rescued and returned to France.
The trio was stranded with little more than their personal possession and they faced starvation and endured harsh winters. In less than a year Marguerite suffered the death of her lover, her nurse and a child she gave birth to on the island.
What makes Marguerite’s story particularly remarkable is the way it has been retold and reshaped across centuries. At least three versions circulated before 1600. Marguerite of Navarre, the French king’s sister, included an early version in her Heptameron, a collection of short tales modeled on Boccaccio’s Decameron. However, Marguerite de Navarre likely heard the story from the uncle’s point of view rather than that of Marguerite. Another version of the story was told by François de Belleforest. He was best known for his Histoires tragiques (1572), dramatizations of a tale’s moral and tragic dimensions, presenting Marguerite as an exiled “demoiselle” punished by fate. A later version was by André Thevet who was the cosmographer to the king and who recorded a lengthy essay in his Cosmographie universelle (1575) on Marguerite’s exile. Thevet included an illustration of the island showing Marguerite with a swaddled child resting in the shade of a palm tree. While Thevet’s account carried the authority of his office, it was riddled with inaccuracies. Each of these retellings reflected the concerns of its author—whether moral instruction, entertainment, or cosmographical authority—rather than the lived truth of Marguerite herself. The story later resurfaced in the nineteenth century, during a cultural revival of interest in exiles and castaways, further demonstrating its enduring resonance.
The book I read, Goodman’s Isola, is part of this long tradition of reinterpreting Marguerite de la Rocque’s ordeal. Goodman took what historical fragments are available and translated them into a compelling story. This retelling of a story through fiction serves as a bridge between past and present, breathing new life into obscure chronicles, restores marginalized voices, and reimagines historical experiences in ways that scholarship alone often cannot.
Just as Horwitz reframed Cook’s voyages through his modern writing, Goodman reinterprets Marguerite’s exile in a way that speaks to contemporary readers. In both cases, the past is not a fixed record but a living dialogue between archival evidence, scholarly interpretation, and narrative imagination.
Furhter readings
- Tony Horwitz, Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone (New York: Henry Holt, 2002).
- Allegra Goodman, Isola (New York: Dial Press, 2025).
- The llegend of Marguerite de Roberval / Arthur P. Stabler (Pullman : Washington State University Pres, 1972).
- Marguerite of Navarre, The Heptameron, trans. P. A. Chilton (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984).
- François de Belleforest, Histoires tragiques (Paris: 1572).
- André Thevet, La cosmographie universelle de tout le monde (Paris: 1575).
This article was written with the assistance of ChatGPT
American Geographical Society Library 