She: A History of Adventure
She, subtitled A History of Adventure, is a novel
by the English writer H.
Rider Haggard, published in book form in 1887
following serialisation in The
Graphic magazine between October 1886 and
January 1887. She was extraordinarily popular upon its release and has
never been out of print.
The
story is a first-person narrative which follows the journey of Horace Holly and
his ward Leo Vincey to a lost kingdom in the African interior. They encounter a
primitive race of natives and a mysterious white queen named Ayesha who reigns
as the all-powerful "She" or "She-who-must-be-obeyed".
Haggard developed many of the conventions of the lost world
genre which countless authors have emulated.[1]
Haggard
was “part of the literary reaction against domestic realism that has been
called a romance revival.” [2]Other writers following this trend were Robert Louis Stevenson, George
MacDonald, and William
Morris. [2] Haggard was inspired by his experiences living in South
Africa for seven years (1875-1882) working
at the highest levels of the British
colonial administration. Like many of
his works, She is a vivid example of what is now labeled, usually with
censure, “imperialist literature”. As such, the story embraces concepts of race
and evolution, especially notions of degeneration, racial decline and racial
purity, prominent in the late Victorian period and at the turn of the
century—ideas whose influence would shape the 20th century. In
nineteenth-century England, works by Haggard and others—such as G.A.
Henty—were devoured by a voracious
audience that included children. [3] In the figure of She, the novel notably explored themes of
female authority and feminine behaviour. Its representation of womanhood has
received both praise and criticism .[4]
Synopsis
A
young Cambridge University professor, Horace Holly, is visited by a colleague, Vincey,
who reveals that he will soon die. Vincey proceeds to tell Holly a fantastical
tale of his family heritage. He charges Holly with the task of raising his
young son, Leo (whom he has never seen) and gives Holly a locked iron box, with
instructions that it is not to be opened until Leo turns 25. Holly agrees, and
indeed Vincey is found dead the next day. Holly raises the boy as his own; when
the box is opened on Leo's 25th birthday they discover the ancient and
mysterious "Sherd
of Amenartas", which seems to corroborate Leo's father's story. Holly, Leo
and their servant, Job, follow instructions on the Sherd and travel to eastern
Africa but are shipwrecked. They alone survive, together with their Arab
captain, Mahomed; after a perilous journey into an uncharted region of the
African interior, they are captured by the savage Amahagger people. The
adventurers learn that the natives are ruled by a fearsome white queen, who is
worshipped as Hiya or "She-who-must-be-obeyed". The
Amahagger are curious about the white-skinned interlopers, having been warned
of their coming by the mysterious queen.
Billali,
the chief elder of one of the Amahagger tribes, takes charge of the three men,
introducing them to the ways of his people. One of the Amahagger maidens,
Ustane, takes a liking to Leo and, by kissing him and embracing him publicly,
weds him according to Amahagger customs. Leo, likewise, grows very fond of her.
Billali
tells Holly that he needs to go and report the white men's arrival to She. In
his absence, some of the Amahagger become restless and seize Mahomed, intending
to eat him as part of a ritual "hot pot". Realising what is about to
happen, Holly shoots several of the Amahagger. Mahomed dies in the effort to
save him from the hot pot, when a bullet passes through one of the Amahagger
and kills him as well. In the ensuing struggle Leo is gravely wounded, but
Ustane saves his life by throwing herself onto his prostrate body to shield him
from spears. All seems lost as the Amahagger resolve to kill Ustane along with
the white men but Billali returns in the nick of time and declares that the
three men are under the protection of She. Leo's condition, however, worsens
and he eventually nears death as Ustane faithfully attends to him.
They
are taken to the home of the queen, which lies near the ruins of the lost city
of Kôr, a once mighty civilisation that predated the Egyptians. The queen and
her retinue live under a dormant volcano in a series of catacombs built as tombs for the people of
Kôr. There, Holly is presented to the queen, a white sorceress
named Ayesha. Her beauty is so great that it enchants any man who beholds it.
She, who is veiled and lies behind a partition, warns Holly that the power of
her splendour arouses both desire and fear, but he is dubious. When she shows
herself, however, Holly is enraptured and prostrates himself before her. Ayesha
reveals that she has learned the secret of immortality and that she possesses
other supernatural powers including the ability to read the minds of others, a
form of clairvoyance
and the ability to heal wounds and cure illness; she is also revealed to have a
tremendous knowledge of chemistry, but is notably unable to see into the
future. She tells Holly that she has lived in the realm of Kôr for more than
two millennia, awaiting the reincarnated return of her lover, Kallikrates (whom
she had slain in a fit of jealous rage). Later, when Holly inadvertently and
secretly discovers Ayesha in her hidden chamber, he learns that she may have
some degree of power to reanimate the dead.
The
next evening She visits Leo to heal him. But upon seeing his face, she is
stunned and declares him to be the reincarnation of Kallikrates. She saves him
and becomes jealous of Ustane. The latter is ordered to leave Leo and never to
set her eyes on him again. Ustane refuses, however, and Ayesha eventually
strikes her dead with magic. Despite the murder of their friend, Holly and Leo
cannot free themselves from the power of Ayesha's beauty and Leo becomes
bewitched. In explaining her history, Ayesha shows Leo the perfectly preserved
body of Kallikrates, which she has kept with her, but she then dissolves the
remains with a powerful acid, confident that Leo is indeed the reincarnation of
her former lover.
In
the climax of the novel, Ayesha takes the two men to see the Pillar of Fire,
passing through the ruined city of Kôr into the heart of the ancient volcano.
She is determined that Leo should bathe in the fire to become immortal and
remain with her forever, and that together they can become the immortal and
all-powerful rulers of the world. After a perilous journey, they come to a
great cavern, but at the last Leo doubts the safety of entering the flame. To
allay his fears, Ayesha steps into the Spirit of Life, but with this second
immersion, the life-preserving power is lost and Ayesha begins to revert to her
true age. Holly speculates that it may be that a second exposure undoes the
effects of the previous or the Spirit of Life spews death on occasion. Before
their eyes, Ayesha withers away in the fire, and her body shrinks. The sight is
so shocking that Job dies in fright. Before dying, Ayesha tells Leo,
"Forget me not. I shall come again!"
Characters
*Horace
Holly – protagonist and narrator, Holly is a Cambridge man whose keen
intellect and knowledge was developed to compensate for his ape-like
appearance. Holly knows a number of ancient languages, including Greek, Arabic,
and Hebrew, which allow him to communicate with the Amahagger (who speak a form
of Arabic) and She (who knows all three languages). Holly's interest in
archaeology and the origins of civilisation lead him to explore the ruins of
Kôr.
- Leo Vincey – ward of Horace Holly, Leo is an attractive, physically active young English gentleman with a thick head of blond hair. He is the confidant of Holly and befriends Ustane. According to She, Leo resembles Kallikrates in appearance and is his reincarnation.
- Ayesha – the title character of the novel, called Hiya by the native Amahagger, or "She" (She-who-must-be-obeyed). Ayesha was born over 2,000 years ago amongst the Arabs, mastering the lore of the ancients and becoming a great sorceress. Learning of the Pillar of Life in the African interior, she journeyed to the ruined kingdom of Kôr, feigning friendship with a hermit who was the keeper of the Flame that granted immortality. She bathed in the Pillar of Life's fire. Her name Ayesha is of Arabic origin and according to the author should be pronounced "Assha".[5]
- Job – Holly's trusted servant. Job is a working-class man and highly suspicious and judgmental of non-English peoples. He is also a devout Protestant. Of all the travellers, he is especially disgusted by the Amahagger and fearful of She.
- Billali – an elder of one of the Amahagger tribes.
- Ustane – an Amahagger maiden. She becomes romantically attached to Leo, caring for him when he is injured, acting as his protector, and defying She to stay with him.
- Kallikrates – an ancient Greek, the husband of Amenartas, and ancestor of Leo. Two thousand years ago, he and Amenartas fled Egypt, seeking a haven in the African interior where they met Ayesha. There, She fell in love with him, promising to give him the secret of immortality if he would kill Amenartas. He refused, and, enraged, She struck him down.
- Amenartas – an ancient Egyptian priestess and ancestress of the Vincey family. As a priestess of Isis, she was protected from the power of She. When Ayesha slew Kallikrates, she expelled Amenartas from her realm. Amenartas gave birth to Kallikrates' son, beginning the line of the Vinceys (Leo's ancestors).
Background
South Africa
In
1875, Haggard was sent to Cape Town, South Africa as secretary to Sir Henry Bulwer, the lieutenant-governor
of Natal.
Haggard wrote in his memoirs of his aspirations to become a colonial governor
himself, and of his youthful excitement at the prospects.[6] The major event during his time in Africa was Britain's
annexation of the Transvaal in 1877. Haggard was part of the expedition that
established British control over the Boer
republic, and which helped raise the Union
flag over the capital of Pretoria on 24 May 1877. Writing of the moment, Haggard
declared:
It
will be some years before people at home realise how great an act it has been,
an act without parallel. I am very proud of having been connected with it.
Twenty years hence it will be a great thing to have hoisted the Union Jack over
the Transvaal for the first time.[7]
Haggard
had advocated the British annexation of the Boer republic in a journal article
entitled "The Transvaal", published in the May 1877 issue of Macmillan's
Magazine. He maintained that it was Britain's "mission to conquer and
hold in subjection, not from thirst of conquest but for the sake of law,
justice, and order".[8] However, Boer resistance to British rule and the resulting Anglo-Zulu
war caused the imperial government in
London to withdraw from pursuing British sovereignty over the South African
interior.[9] Haggard considered this to be a "great betrayal"
by Prime Minister Gladstone
and the Liberal Party, which "no lapse of time ever can solace or even
alleviate".[10] He became increasingly disillusioned with the realities of
colonial Africa. Victorian scholar Patrick Brantlinger notes in his
introduction to She: "Little that Haggard witnessed matched the
romantic depictions of 'the dark continent' in boys' adventure novels, in the
press, and even in such bestselling explorers' journals as David
Livingstone's Missionary Travels and
Researches in South Africa (1857)."[11]
During
his time in South Africa, Haggard developed an intense hatred for the Boers,
but also came to admire the Zulus.[12] However, his admiration of the Zulus did not extend to
other African peoples; rather, he shared many of the assumptions that underlay
contemporary Victorian politics and philosophy,[13] such as those expressed by James Hunt, the President of the
Anthropological
Society of London: "the Negro is inferior
intellectually to the European...[and] can only be humanised and civilised by
Europeans. The analogies are far more numerous between the Negro and apes, than
between the European and apes."[14] The Victorian belief in the inherent inferiority of the
'darker races' made them the object of a civilising impulse in the European Scramble for Africa.
Although disenchanted with the colonial effort, Haggard remained committed to
this ideology. He believed that the British "alone of all the nations in
the world appear to be able to control coloured races without the exercise of
cruelty".[15]
Return to Britain
Rider
Haggard returned to Britain in 1881. At the time, England was increasingly
beset by the social and cultural anxieties that marked the fin
de siècle.[16] One of the most prominent concerns was the fear of
political and racial decline, encapsulated in Max
Nordau's Degeneration (1895). Barely half a century earlier, Thomas Babington
Macaulay had declared "the history of
England" to be "emphatically the history of progress",[17] but late-Victorians living in the wake of Darwinian
evolutionary theory had lost the earlier positivism of
their age.[18] Uncertainty over the immutability of Britain's historical
identity, what historian Tim Murray has called the "threat of the
past", was manifested in the Victorian obsession with ancient times and
archaeology.[19] Haggard was greatly interested in the ruins
discovered at Zimbabwe in the
1870s. In 1896, he provided the preface to a monograph that detailed a history
of the site, declaring:
What
was the condition of this so-called empire, and what the measure of the
effective dignity of its emperor, are points rather difficult to determine...
now, after the lapse of two centuries... it is legitimate to hope, it seems
probable even, that in centuries to come a town will once more nestle beneath
these grey and ancient ruins, trading in gold as did that of the Phoenicians,
but peopled by men of the Anglo-Saxon race.[20]
By
the time that Haggard began writing She, society had more anxiety about
the role of women. Debates regarding "The Woman Question" dominated
Britain during the fin de siècle, as well as anxieties over the
increasing position and independence of the "New
Woman".[21] Alarm over social degeneration and societal decadence
further fanned concerns over the women's movement and female liberation, which
challenged the traditional conception of Victorian womanhood.[22] The role and rights of women had changed dramatically since
the early part of the century, as they entered the workforce, received better
education, and gained more political and legal independence. Writing in 1894,
Haggard believed that marriage was the natural state for women:
"Notwithstanding the energetic repudiations of the fact that confront us
at every turn, it may be taken for granted that in most cases it is the natural
mission of women to marry; that – always in most cases – if they do not marry
they become narrowed, live a half life only, and suffer in health of body and
of mind."[23] He created the character of She-who-must-be-obeyed
"who provided a touchstone for many of the anxieties surrounding the New
Woman in late-Victorian England".[24]
Concept and creation
According
to Haggard's daughter Lilias,
the phrase "She-who-must-be-obeyed" originated from his childhood and
"the particularly hideous aspect" of one rag-doll: "This doll
was something of a fetish, and Rider, as a small child, was terrified of her, a
fact soon discovered by an unscrupulous nurse who made full use of it to
frighten him into obedience. Why or how it came to be called
She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed he could not remember."[25] Haggard wrote that "the title She" was
taken "from a certain rag doll, so named, which a nurse at Bradenham used
to bring out of some dark recess in order to terrify those of my brothers and
sisters who were in her charge."[26]
In
his autobiography, Haggard spoke of how he composed She within a
six-week period of February and March 1886, having just completed Jess,
which was published in 1887. Haggard claimed that this period was an intensely
creative moment: the text "was never rewritten, and the manuscript carries
but few corrections". Haggard went on to declare: "The fact is that
it was written at white heat, almost without rest, and that is the best way to
compose." He admitted to having had no clear story in mind when he began
writing:
I
remember that when I sat down to the task my ideas as to its development were
of the vaguest. The only clear notion that I had in my head was that of an
immortal woman inspired by an immortal love. All the rest shaped itself round
this figure. And it came—it came faster than my poor aching hand could set it
down.
Various
scholars have detected a number of analogues to She in earlier
literature. According to Brantlinger, Haggard certainly read and was aware of
the stories of Edward Bulwer-Lytton, in particular A Strange Story (1862) which includes
a mysterious, veiled woman called "Ayesha", and The
Coming Race (1871) about the discovery of a
subterranean civilisation.[27] Similarly, the name of the underground civilisation in She,
known as Kôr, is derived from Norse mythological romance, where the
"deathbed" of the goddess Hel is called Kör and means "disease" in Old Norse.[28] In She, a plague destroyed the original inhabitants
of Kôr.
According
to Haggard, he wrote the final scene of Ayesha's demise while waiting for his
literary agent, A. P. Watt, to return to his offices. Upon completion, he
entered Watt's office and threw the manuscript "...on the table with the
remark: 'There is what I shall be remembered by'".[29]
An
obscure reference to She appears in Lieut. George Witton's 1907 book, Scapegoats
of the Empire; The True Story of the Bushveldt Carbineers:
By
midday we reached the Letaba Valley, in the Majajes Mountains, inhabited by a
powerful tribe of natives once ruled by a princess said to be the prototype of
Rider Haggard's 'She'.[30]
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