Heteronym
New Member
She must have terrified readers when it first came out. I can only imagine how the prim, sexually-pressed Victorian society received a novel about an immortal woman who commands a lost tribe, possesses mystical powers, can submit any man to her will by unveiling her face, and has the knowledge to take over the world. There’s a pleasure in watching someone transgressing all accepted rules. Perhaps that’s what made She such a successful novel in 1886.
The novel starts as the 19th century equivalent of The Da Vinci Code: mysterious messages written in dead languages, secrets from the past, an urge to unveil a truth that has remained hidden for centuries; there’s Leo Vincey who wants to know the truth about his lineage (rest assured, he doesn’t descend from Jesus Christ). Once the action jumps from Cambridge to Africa, it becomes Heart of Darkness if Nietzsche had written it.
This is a fun mixture of adventure and fantasy. It has all the elements that made me enjoy King Solomon’s Mines; but whereas this novel was all fast-paced adventure, She is sometimes philosophical: Ayesha, she-who-must-be-obeyed, is a woman who, having lived for centuries in seclusion from the world, has developed a philosophy and conception of good and evil that rejects conventionality; she’s like a law unto herself. But she’s also a woman, so of course she falls in love with Leo when she believes he’s the reincarnation of the man she fell in love with 2000 years ago.
There’s also a pleasure in world-building: Haggard enjoys inventing awkward customs for the Amahagger, the people Ayesha rules, building a history for them, making up lost civilizations, mixing history with fiction. It’s the beginning of the obsessive, map-including, new-language-inventing trend that Tolkien ruined fantasy with. But here it’s kept to a sane minimum, it’s fun.
She is a fine way of spending a couple of days reading.
The novel starts as the 19th century equivalent of The Da Vinci Code: mysterious messages written in dead languages, secrets from the past, an urge to unveil a truth that has remained hidden for centuries; there’s Leo Vincey who wants to know the truth about his lineage (rest assured, he doesn’t descend from Jesus Christ). Once the action jumps from Cambridge to Africa, it becomes Heart of Darkness if Nietzsche had written it.
This is a fun mixture of adventure and fantasy. It has all the elements that made me enjoy King Solomon’s Mines; but whereas this novel was all fast-paced adventure, She is sometimes philosophical: Ayesha, she-who-must-be-obeyed, is a woman who, having lived for centuries in seclusion from the world, has developed a philosophy and conception of good and evil that rejects conventionality; she’s like a law unto herself. But she’s also a woman, so of course she falls in love with Leo when she believes he’s the reincarnation of the man she fell in love with 2000 years ago.
There’s also a pleasure in world-building: Haggard enjoys inventing awkward customs for the Amahagger, the people Ayesha rules, building a history for them, making up lost civilizations, mixing history with fiction. It’s the beginning of the obsessive, map-including, new-language-inventing trend that Tolkien ruined fantasy with. But here it’s kept to a sane minimum, it’s fun.
She is a fine way of spending a couple of days reading.
