The subject of research of this doctoral dissertation entitled French female travel writers to Southwest Asia in the 19th century are the works by barely or unknown to the public French female travel writers that are travelling to Southwest Asia in the 19th century. The travelogues are investigated in regards to the orientalist discourse of the female travel writers and its development in the direction of openness to the other and the foreign, and the possiblity of hybridization. It will be determined to what extent the female travel writers adopt François-René de Chateaubriand's imperialist discourse, respectively to what extent they dodge it by observing differences as an enrichment like Alphonse de Lamartine, or by admiring the harmony of contrastive elements like Gustave Flaubert. The hypothesis of this dissertation is that the mayor part of French female travel writers not only reproduces orientalist discourse in regards to life of inhabitants, life of women, bazar descriptions, cities and harems, but also reveal the wish to meet the other/the foreign without value filters. By application of contemporary anglophone and francophone postcolonial critic starting with Edward Said, to Homi K. Bhabha, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Aimé Césaire, Frantz Fanon, Albert Memmi the hypothesis of the doctoral dissertation will be confirmed or enlarged. Are there maybe some that go a step further in the direction to give the oppressed subject the right to speak in its name and to represent itself. It will be investigated how the travel writers react on slavery and enslavement in general. As travelogues are a hybrid genre in this dissertation different theories from the historical method, imagology, comparative analysis referring to French male-female travelogue discourse, postcolonial critique, starting with Said's orientalism, to Bhabha's third space theory, subaltern theory by Spivak, and contemporary francophone postcolonial criticism. In this dissertation will be applyed for the first time the actantial sheme of Dean Duda to French femal travel writing in order to, through the role of the actants, counter-actants the hypothesis of this dissertation could be confirmed or widened. Such an approach represents a novelty in relation to previous investigations concerning French female travel discourse and the results of the investigation will open new questions for future scientific research in that field.