An ugly, middle aged man and his handsome ward journey into Africa, ultimately encountering the beautiful and powerful She. This is H. Rider Haggard's astonishing and brilliant 1887 novel.
Earlier this year, I bought a 1928 collection of Haggard's novels that includes Cleopatra (1889), She (1887), King Solomon's Mines (1885), and Allan Quatermain (1887), for some reason in that order, not in order of first publication. I wasn't aware of this when I dived right into Cleopatra, which I found to be mostly disappointing. Aside from a few descriptions that conjure a Lovecraftian sense of the sinister and ineffable, the meat of the book is a silly love triangle between Cleopatra, a handmaiden, and the attractive male protagonist they both have the hots for. I assumed She was written after Haggard had analysed all the problems inherent in Cleopatra because She also has a love triangle between a powerful queen, a maiden among her subjects, and an improbably attractive young man. Only, in She, it's brilliant. Imagine my surprise when I learned Cleopatra was actually published two years later.
There are a few, underlying reasons why She works and Cleopatra doesn't. The most important is the protagonist, Horace Holly, the ugly man. That's not my opinion, it's his, and the several other characters who comment on his appearance, including the eponymous She, Ayesha. In lost the tribe of humans with yellow skin and European features, descended from a long lost, mighty civilisation, Holly earns the nickname of "baboon". The novel starts off with a description of Holly and how, "at the wrong side of forty," he's comfortable having given up on women, even jovially calling himself a proud misogynist. He's clearly not entirely serious about this from the way he describes specific women in the story, always with courtesy and respect, except for the one who tries to murder his servant. He's not merely the opposite of the simplistically strong, handsome priest in Cleopatra, he has ambiguities that come off as complex instead of insubstantial. I suspect this is due to Haggard's writing the novel in six weeks, "in a white heat, almost without rest." Here's a demonstration of why Kerouac was onto something when he advocated spontaneous writing. One result is that Haggard's philosophical, scientific, and political opinions are rendered those of Holly, subject to being challenged organically by circumstances, rather than being forced as a controlling hand on the narrative.
Holly describes a brief philosophical debate between himself and Ayesha.
“Ah!” she said; “I see—two new religions! I have known so many, and doubtless there have been many more since I knew aught beyond these caves of Kôr. Mankind asks ever of the skies to vision out what lies behind them. It is terror for the end, and but a subtler form of selfishness—this it is that breeds religions. Mark, my Holly, each religion claims the future for its followers; or, at least, the good thereof. The evil is for those benighted ones who will have none of it; seeing the light the true believers worship, as the fishes see the stars, but dimly. The religions come and the religions pass, and the civilisations come and pass, and naught endures but the world and human nature. Ah! if man would but see that hope is from within and not from without—that he himself must work out his own salvation! He is there, and within him is the breath of life and a knowledge of good and evil as good and evil is to him. Thereon let him build and stand erect, and not cast himself before the image of some unknown God, modelled like his poor self, but with a bigger brain to think the evil thing, and a longer arm to do it.”
I thought to myself, which shows how old such reasoning is, being, indeed, one of the recurring qualities of theological discussion, that her argument sounded very like some that I have heard in the nineteenth century, and in other places than the caves of Kôr, and with which, by the way, I totally disagree, but I did not care to try and discuss the question with her. To begin with, my mind was too weary with all the emotions through which I had passed, and, in the second place, I knew that I should get the worst of it. It is weary work enough to argue with an ordinary materialist, who hurls statistics and whole strata of geological facts at your head, whilst you can only buffet him with deductions and instincts and the snowflakes of faith, that are, alas! so apt to melt in the hot embers of our troubles. How little chance, then, should I have against one whose brain was supernaturally sharpened, and who had two thousand years of experience, besides all manner of knowledge of the secrets of Nature at her command! Feeling that she would be more likely to convert me than I should to convert her, I thought it best to leave the matter alone, and so sat silent. Many a time since then have I bitterly regretted that I did so, for thereby I lost the only opportunity I can remember having had of ascertaining what Ayesha really believed, and what her “philosophy” was.
Haggard also was evidently in disagreement with her but he presents her argument as perfectly rational, he gives it justice, and doesn't waste time trying to mount an argument against it that's beyond his ability. Three great things are happening here:
1) Holly functions in this story, and for this story, extremely well because he's "down-to-earth". Just as the humanity of Indiana Jones contrasts with and emphasises the effect of the supernatural. In She, this is again and again a virtue, and the wonders that would have become dull through the eyes of Cleopatra's narrator remain wonders when seen through his eyes.
2) Haggard is chewing on the same problem as Dostoevsky and Herman Melville and countless other great 19th century writers--the conflict between the amoral, rational, Napoleonic strongman, and good old, self-sacrificing, Christian virtue.
3) Unlike the silly teenager Haggard turned Cleopatra into, Ayesha genuinely seems possessed of great wisdom and intellectual acumen. She has wrestled with, and continues to wrestle with, difficult questions.
Before the climax of the novel, I tried to forget that I've seen the Hammer film version (which I fondly remember but doesn't compare to the book). I asked myself, what fate can Ayesha get away with? Does she have to die? She does commit murder from purely selfish motives, a remarkable thing contrasted with other parts of the book where she muses on the value of ruling without passion. But when you really think about the circumstances surrounding the woman she kills, the harder it is not to sympathise with Ayesha. She waited two thousand years for her lover to return, only for him to marry a girl almost immediately after meeting her. The story thereby becomes a true tragedy--she's responsible for her doom, but we can take no pleasure in it being meted out.
It's easy to see why HP Lovecraft called She "remarkably good." Evocations of ancient and gigantic things are brilliantly laid down by Haggard. A fascinating encounter with an ancient statue representing Truth is both a sobering testament to human mortality, the underlying motives of all human endeavour, and another reflection of the book's exploration of unattainable sexual fulfillment.
“Who is she?” I asked, as soon as I could take my eyes off the statue.
“Canst thou not guess, oh Holly?” answered Ayesha. “Where then is thy imagination? It is Truth standing on the World, and calling to its children to unveil her face. See what is writ upon the pedestal. Without doubt it is taken from the book of Scriptures of these men of Kôr,” and she led the way to the foot of the statue, where an inscription of the usual Chinese-looking hieroglyphics was so deeply graven as to be still quite legible, at least to Ayesha. According to her translation it ran thus:—
“Is there no man that will draw my veil and look upon my face, for it is very fair? Unto him who draws my veil shall I be, and peace will I give him, and sweet children of knowledge and good works.”
And a voice cried, “Though all those who seek after thee desire thee, behold! Virgin art thou, and Virgin shalt thou go till Time be done. No man is there born of woman who may draw thy veil and live, nor shall be. By Death only can thy veil be drawn, oh Truth!”
And Truth stretched out her arms and wept, because those who sought her might not find her, nor look upon her face to face.
Carl Jung cited Ayesha as an illustration of anima, and this statue of Truth is like another step deeper into that journey. The impression of woman existing in the man's mind, and all the complicated desires and frustrations that entails, is used to illustrate the relationship between all humanity and something brilliant and unattainable, always beckoning just on the other side of an impassible gulf.
So this is one hell of a book.
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