Imperialism
She is set firmly in the imperialist literature of the late-Victorian period. The so-called "New Imperialism" marking the last quarter of the 19th century witnessed a further expansion of European colonies, particularly on the African continent, and was characterised by a seeming confidence in the merits of empire and European civilisation.[58] Thus She "invokes a particularly British view of the world" as Rider Haggard projects concepts of the English self against the foreign otherness of Africa.[59] One example occurs when Holly is first ushered into the presence of Ayesha, walking into the chamber behind a grovelling Billali who warns Holly to follow his example, or "a surety she will blast thee where thou standest". She stresses quintessential British qualities through the "adventure" of empire, usually in contrast to foreign barbarism.[60] The notion of imperialism is further compounded by the figure of She, who is herself a foreign colonising force. "In a sense then", Stauffer writes, "a single property line divides the realm of Queen Victoria and that of She-who-must-be-obeyed, two white queens who rule dark-skinned natives of the African continent."[61]
Race and evolution
Like many of his Victorian contemporaries, Rider Haggard proceeded "on the assumption that whites are naturally superior to blacks, and that Britain's imperial extensions into Africa [were] a noble, civilising enterprise".[62] Although Haggard wrote a number of novels that portray Africans in a comparatively realistic light, She is not among their number. Even in King Solomon's Mines, the representation of Umbopa (who was based on an actual warrior) and the Kukuanas drew upon Haggard's knowledge and understanding of the Zulus.[63] In contrast, She makes no such distinctions. Ayesha, the English travellers and the ancient inhabitants of Kôr are all white embodiments of civilisation, while the darker Amahagger, as a people, illustrate notions of savagery, barbarity and superstition. Nonetheless, the "racial politics of the novel are more complex than they first appear", given that Ayesha is in origin an ancient Arabian; Leo is descended from, and physically resembles, a blond Hellenistic Greek; and Holly is said to resemble a baboon, an animal that Victorians typically associated with black Africans.[61] Critics such as Wendy Katz, Patricia Murphy and Susan Gubar have discussed what they perceive as a strong racist undercurrent in She,[64][65] but Andrew takes note of the ways in which "the novel suggests deeper connections among the races, an ancient genealogy of ethnicities and civilizations in which every character is a hybrid".[61]
There is a strong Social Darwinian pseudo-scientific undercurrent framing the representation of race in She, stemming from Haggard's own interests in evolutionary theory and archaeology.[66] In particular, the theme of racial degeneration appears in the novel. Moving into the fin de siècle, late Victorians were increasingly concerned about cultural and national decline resulting from racial decay.[67] In She, this evolutionary concept of degeneration through miscegenation is manifested in Ayesha and the Amahagger. Haggard represents the Amahagger as a debased mixture of ethnicities, "a curious mingling of races", originally descended from the inhabitants of Kôr but intermarried with Arabs and Africans.[68] Racial hybridisation of any kind "entailed degeneration" to Victorians, a "decline from the pure blood" of the initial races, and thus "an aspect of their degeneration is the idea that the Amahagger have lost whatever elements of civilization their Kôr ancestors may have imparted to them".[69] Ayesha proudly proclaims her own racial purity as a quality to be admired: "for Arabian am I by birth, even 'al Arab al Ariba' (an Arab of the Arabs), and of the race of our father Yárab, the son of Khâtan ... of the true Arab blood".[70] However, Judith Wilt has argued that the novel's starkest evocation of the evolutionary principle occurs in the regressive demise of Ayesha. Stepping into the Pillar of Fire, the immortal She begins to wither and decay, undergoing what Wilt describes as the "ultimate Darwinian nightmare": evolution in reverse.[71]
Female authority and sexuality
Illustration from the Graphic (1886). Holly first looks upon the figure of She, while Billali lies prostrate on the floor fearing to look up.When Rider Haggard first conceived of She he began with the theme of "an immortal woman inspired by an immortal love".[72] Although ostensibly a romance, the novel is part of the wider discourse regarding women and womanhood in late-Victorian Britain. Many scholars have noted how She was published as a book in 1887, the year of Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee, and Adrienne Munich argues that Haggard's story "could fittingly be considered an ominous literary monument to Victoria after fifty years of her reign".[73] Indeed, in her devotion to Kallikrates (two thousand years after his death), Ayesha echoes the long-lasting fidelity of Victoria to her husband, Albert. However, unlike the "benign" Victoria, the question of female authority is realised to the extreme in the figure of She-who-must-be-obeyed, whose autonomous will seemingly embodies Victorian anti-feminist fears of New Women desiring 'absolute personal independence coupled with supreme power over men'.[74] Haggard constantly emphasises this anxiety over female authority in She, so that even the rationally minded and misogynistic Holly, who has put his "heart away from such vanity as woman's loveliness", ultimately falls upon his knees and worships Ayesha "as never woman was worshipped".[75] Similarly, although the masculine and chivalric Leo is determined to reject Ayesha for killing the devoted native girl Ustane, he too quickly falls under her will. [76]
In her role as the seductive femme fatale, Ayesha is part of "a long tradition of male fantasy that includes Homer's Circe, Shakespeare's Cleopatra, and Keats's 'La Belle Dame sans Merci'".[77] Brantlinger identifies the theme of "the white (or at least light-skinned) queen ruling a black or brown-skinned savage race" as "a powerfully erotic one" with its opposite being "the image of the helpless white woman captured by savages and threatened, at least, with rape".[78] The figure of She both inspires male desire and dominates male sovereignty, represented in her conquest of the 'enlightened' Victorians Holly and Leo. The two Englishmen embody the powers of manhood, with Leo a reflection of masculine physicality and Holly a representation of man's intellectual strength, but both are conquered by the feminine powers of She, who rules as much through sex-appeal as through sorcery, immortality, and will. Thus, Steven Arata describes her as "the veiled woman, that ubiquitous nineteenth-century figure of male desire and anxiety, whose body is Truth but a Truth that blasts".[79] Similarly, Sarah Gilbert sees the theme of feminine sexuality and authority realised in Ayesha as critical to the novel's success: "Unlike the women earlier Victorian writers had idealised or excoriated, She was neither an angel nor a monster. Rather, She was an odd but significant blend of the two types – an angelically chaste woman with monstrous powers, a monstrously passionate woman with angelic charms".[80]
