Reviewing "Marie" by H. Rider Haggard

 

Pretty early on in reading this Allan Quatermain novel I considered stopping. More than any of the other Quatermain adventures I’ve read, Marie is rife with racism, both in the characters’ dialog and the overall narrative.

This was not simply racism of Europeans against Africans (although there was certainly plenty of that!), but of different ethnicities of the same color. The French hate the English, the Dutch hate the English, the English hate the both of them, and all them hate—or at least mistreat—the Africans. There is even a jab at Jews—even though there aren’t any Jewish main characters to be seen!

Is it right to read a book with racism in it? Or does it seep into one’s thoughts and attitudes? On the other hand, does pretending that racism doesn’t exist leave one open to ignorance? Is it possibly helpful to read a book one doesn’t agree with, to mentally argue with it, and thus sharpen one’s mind and feelings against occurrences of racism in the real world?

I did read it, mostly because I hold Crime of the Congo close to my heart, and I wanted to compare this “adventure novel” with the horrific realities of colonized Africa during that time. I also wanted to read this prequel to King Solomon’s Mines which at last tells the tragic story of Allan’s first wife, Marie—a romantic, fictional tragedy set along the backdrop of historic, nonfictional tragedy.

“Written” by Allan retrospectively as an old man, the story recounts his life in South Africa with his missionary father. I don’t even know why Quatermain Senior was in Africa, he was so racist! He hates the French and Dutch, but for some reason arranges for his son Allan to be tutored by a Frenchman to learn how to speak French at the house of a French-Dutch guy. This is where Allan meets Marie, the tall, beautiful daughter of said French-Dutch guy. Inevitably they fall in love. But both their fathers (surprise surprise) hate each other for the mere fact of their native language and homeland, and forbid the match.

The super-racist French tutor kills an African, and the African’s clan comes after him for revenge, thus endangering Marie. Of course Allan comes to her rescue. This does nothing to prove his worth to her father—in fact I think he saves not only Marie’s life, but her father and several other people about fifty times throughout the book, and still her dad hates him!

As if forbidding the marriage wasn’t enough, racist French Dad then introduces a rival for Marie’s affections in the form of her French-Portuguese cousin (apparently it’s okay if a guy speaks any other language except English), who turns out to be not only a coward and a cad, but also extremely evil.

When Allan beats French-Portuguese Cousin at a shooting match and shows everyone how much of a slimeball Cousin really is, French Dad takes Marie and Cousin away with him on a pilgrimage with some Dutch dissidents against the British “sovereignty” of the area, into the most dangerous part of the wilderness.

There they immediately begin to starve to death. Marie sends a messenger to Allan pleading for him to save her (again…although why she didn’t just run away with the messenger to get back to civilization is beyond me). Of course he does, and when he finds all the pilgrims starving he discovers that Cousin has taken all their supplies on a trip to “find help”—stranding them in the desert. One would hope that he’d go off and die in the wilderness and leave Allan and Marie in peace, but nooooooo…

Just when things start looking up, something bad happens (this is a common theme in this book). One of the slaves (I won’t call them servants, as I doubt they were getting paid) who had gone off with the Cousin returns to the camp half-dead. They’d been attacked by a lion and one of the other slaves was killed, while the Cousin is probably also dead.

Well, the French Dad gets all huffy that they need to go rescue his probably-dead nephew, but everyone else is understandably hesitant to save the life of someone who just left them for dead. Marie convinces Allan to go along with her dad, because her dad is useless. (She didn’t say that, but that’s how I interpreted it when I read it.) So, despite the fact that letting French Dad go off to be eaten by lions along with his evil nephew would clear the way to Allan and Marie being together, Allan agrees to help.

The next morning French Dad has come down with a suspiciously isolated case of food poisoning and can’t go. Allan knows he’s faking, but again allows Marie to convince him to go off on a rescue mission alone. Unfortunately he finds the Portuguese Cousin, checks his pulse, sees he’s dead, and gets up to walk away…and then the dead guy moans. Argh! So of course Allan being the upstanding honorable Englishman nurses the cousin back to health, thus sealing the impending doom that occurs for the rest of the book.

In retrospect I am actually glad I read this book, despite all the horrible things that happen and all the vitriolic ethnic slurs against…well, pretty much everyone. And here’s why I’m glad:

There were a few characters I did like in the book. I liked one of the Boer women, Vrouw Prinsloo, who was the most genre-savvy character and often said exactly what I was thinking when I read it, such as “Hey Allan nobody would blame you if that cousin *cough* accidentally *cough* died on the way back from that rescue mission.” Although she was annoying, she was also very brave, and while strong women aren’t exactly unheard of in Quatermain books, they usually are outnumbered by the Perfect Paragons of Femininity that are constantly in need of saving from some hazard or another. (Marie, for instance, is pretty brave herself, in her own way, but her entire existence is intertwined with her father’s decisions and her love for Allan, and if you subtract the men in her life there’s really not much substance to her character.)

I also liked Hans quite a bit in this book. According to the Quatermain books, Hans is a “Hottentot”—an African belonging to the Khoikhoi peoples. I had to look this up, because once in awhile one comes across “hottentot” in Victorian literature, and I always mix it up with Boers for some reason. I had heard of the Khoikhoi elsewhere, as their language is famous for its characteristic clicks. Apparently this is where the nickname “hottentot” came from, as a sort of imitation of the Khoikhoi language, much like the ancient Greeks called any non-Greeks “barbarians” because their language sounded like “bar bar.” Like “barbarian,” “hottentot” is a pejorative phrase. One of the reasons I’m glad I read this book, then, is that it caused me to look this up and to learn this, lest I in ignorance use a racist slur.

As I was saying, I liked Hans a lot in this book. He’s in other books, too, but I always disliked how his character was handled. In some ways Hans is Allan Quatermain’s trusty sidekick…except really he’s Allan’s servant. And the way Allan treats him is less than a servant, more like a slave. But despite how Allan treats Hans, or even how the author Haggard characterizes him, Hans turns out to be one of the more sensible characters in Marie. While Allan tends to see his caution as cowardice, Hans has a sense of survival that would have prevented a lot of issues if Allan had just listened to his advice. Also, even though Allan treats him horribly and doesn’t deserve it, Hans shows himself to be a loyal friend, showing compassion to Allan during all his romantic drama.  

But most importantly, I’m glad I read this book because of what it taught me about the destructive power of bigotry. Several times a character (usually Allan or Hans) try to warn people of dangers and are dismissed out of hand because of the color of their skin or the language they speak. As it turns out, the majority of the plot is based on historical events. Allan and his fellow fictional companions (Hans, Marie, her father and cousin, and Vrouw Prinsloo) have no impact on history, but are just along for the ride. Tragedy is inevitable. However, tragedy was completely avoidable (not only in the book but in real life). Whether Haggard really intended it or not, the moral of Marie is that racism and prejudice destroy everything they touch and corrupt even the best intentions. Like Allan, those who survive the destruction can’t even claim victory, as they are haunted by the consequences of hate for the rest of their lives.