How did I come to read this book?
I read Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne because it’s on a lot of lists of classic books, and I’ve read other top Verne books, but not this one.
Then, because I somehow thought Journey to the Center of the Earth had more dinosaurs in it, I read The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle, which is possibly the one I was thinking of.
The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle made me think of Michael Crichton’s novels The Lost World and also Congo, which I read in 2010.
Congo was (according to Wikipedia) inspired by King Solomon’s Mines, a novel by H. Rider Haggard, which I’ve also repeatedly seen on lists of classic books, so I read King Solomon’s Mines.
Then, because the novel She is by the same author as King Solomon’s Mines, and I’ve seen it on lists of classics (some indicating that it was an early science-fiction or early feminist novel), I read it too.
Phew!
Overall impression? What a creepy story. Really not my style.
There were some interesting psychological/philosophical observations, and some poetic, if melancholy, descriptive passages, but mainly the atmosphere was, in general, unpleasantly macabre. The physical surroundings of the characters consisted almost entirely of caves and tombs, except when the characters were traveling on stormy seas or across mosquito-infested swamps. There is no joy in this book whatsoever; the survival of the narrator is a matter of narrow escape—of relief rather than victory. But maybe that’s the point? Reading the book is like passing through a haunted house: you frighten yourself thoroughly with impossibilities, and then return to the real world with a new appreciation for normalcy.
So yeah. Well done, H. Rider Haggard. Thanks, I hate it.
See below for some more specific observations on this unsettling book from 1886.
Writing Techniques
It is a neat trick, I realized, for the author to narrate the story from the perspective of a character, but to give him a kind of hindsight-driven omniscience. This combines the best aspects of first-person (or close third-person) narration, popular today, with the best aspects of the disembodied know-it-all, more popular in times past. The only disadvantage I can think of in using this technique is that if you use it, readers know that the protagonist/narrator survives. But this is a normal shield-of-Hollywood expectation in any case, so little suspense is sacrificed, in my opinion.
Oh, wait, no, there is a bigger disadvantage to this technique, which is that you reallly have to stretch if you want this pseudo-omniscient narrator to report the thoughts of another character. I remember thinking that Ishmael does this in Moby Dick, reporting something Ahab says when Ahab is alone on the deck (???), and Haggard’s narrator Horace Holly does it once too: he repeats thoughts that were oh-so-conveniently expressed as mutterings by another character, when the other character thought Holly was asleep. (Yeah, sure. Whatever. Okay.)
Another interesting author trick: abundant lampshading. The narrator, several times, says that the tale he’s relating is so unlikely that if he hadn’t lived through it, he wouldn’t believe it himself. Lampshading is basically reverse-psychology: it has the effect of making it easier for readers to suspend disbelief. And if readers really can’t believe the author’s nonsense, then the lampshading is equivalent to “you can’t fire me; I quit.” In other words, the author’s dignity is saved from accusations of excessive fancifulness, because he’s already on record as having wryly accused himself. Haggard, in fact, seemingly uses this technique to praise his own creativity: “[I]t scarcely seemed likely that such a story could have been invented by anybody. It was too original.”
Here’s another thing Haggard does: he tells you things are indescribable. I’m not sure whether this is lazy or genius or both! Like, you’re the author. If you want us to know what something looked like or sounded like or felt like, you can’t not tell us! On the other hand, if a novel provides a kind of vague sketch, the reader’s imagination might very well fill in its own rich details… and then credit the author with having orchestrated this personalized imaginative experience.
Themes
Although the text starts out suggesting that scientific exploration of nature can eventually reveal whatever humans want to know, and assist them in doing and being whatever they wish to do and be, for as long as they wish, the story ultimately rejects this view in favor of a Christian one. In particular, indefinite extension of earthly life is deemed to be only a path to frustrated attempts at impossible omniscience, and an unnecessary delay of the hoped-for transition to an actually everlasting existence of blessed purity. “For, while the flesh endures, sorrow and evil and the scorpion whips of sin must endure also; but when the flesh hath fallen from us, then shall the spirit shine forth clad in the brightness of eternal good, and for its common air shall breathe so rare an ether of most noble thoughts that the highest aspiration of our manhood, or the purest incense of a maiden’s prayer, would prove too earthly gross to float therein.”
I have the vague impression that some have called the book proto-feminist. It depicts a society where women are revered because they are the ones who produce offspring. They choose their husbands rather freely and boldly. And of course Queen Ayesha, the She-who-must-be-obeyed of the title, is a powerful female figure. Certainly, however, the author’s intent does not seem to be to admire woman. Ayesha is depicted as snakelike, and compared to the devil; her beauty is a temptation to embrace cynical, cruel, relativist/subjectivist (amoral), ends-justify-the-means, anti-Christian views of human life.
And what is her end? Ayesha’s salient characteristic, apart from her longevity and beauty, is her loyalty to one man across the ages. She will do anything to reunite with him. I’m not really clear how this is a virtue, though, especially considering she tried to steal him from his lover, and in a fit of rage, killed him out of envy. Not a healthy kind of love, if you ask me; but then, I don’t understand people’s admiration for the needlessly tragic teenage love of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, or the self-indulgent illicit love of Tristan and Isolde as depicted in Tristan and Isolde (2006). If people wish to construe something as a sappy love story and not a lesson on what absolutely not to do, they will, I guess.
Deja vu!!!
I wonder if C.S. Lewis read She? Ayesha reminds me of Jadis in The Magician’s Nephew. Haggard’s city of Kor could have inspired Lewis’s Charn. Probably not, though. Both authors were inspired by Christian tradition; that would explain quite a bit of overlap.
OHHHHH!!! I’ve now read another chunk of the Wikipedia article, and it turns out the similarity is not a coincidence:
Haggard’s characterisation of Ayesha became the prototype of the female antagonist in modern fantasy literature,[41] most famously realised in the figure of the White Witch, Jadis, in C. S. Lewis‘s The Chronicles of Narnia.[106][107]
Okay. So. I feel gratified I made that connection. Cool beans.
Nuggets of Wisdom
The unknown is generally taken to be terrible, not as the proverb would infer, from the inherent superstition of man, but because it so often is terrible.
[S]urely the food that memory gives to eat is bitter to the taste, and it is only with the teeth of hope that we can bear to bite it.
“Ah,” she said, “a democracy—then surely there is a tyrant, for I have long since seen that democracies, having no clear will of their own, in the end set up a tyrant, and worship him.”
When and Why I Read She: A History of Adventure
This is the other famous book by the author of King Solomon's Mines.
Genre: classic adventure
Date started / date finished: 28-Feb-25 to 08-Mar-25
Length: 245 pages
ISBN:
Originally published in: 1886/2006/2020
