Reviewing “She: A History of Adventure” by H. Rider Haggard

She begins almost like an H.G. Wells novel, as a narrative within a narrative. The Editor is publishing an account sent to him by Horace Holly, a colleague whom he’d met at University years before. It is Holly who really narrates the rest of the book, while the Editor inserts annoying little commentaries in the footnotes intermittently.

Holly is a good but ugly man who lived the majority of his life buried in academia. About 25
years before the main adventure begins, a friend of Holly’s named Vincey comes to him the
night before his death, telling him about his son Leo--whom he’s never seen, being grieved
because his wife died in childbirth--and entrusting Holly to raise him.

Vincey also has a morbid mission for his son to fulfill: vengeance. Vincey explains that his
family can be traced back three centuries B.C., to a Greco-Egyptian priest who eloped with an
Egyptian Princess. The two fugitives found themselves in a strange land ruled by a mysterious
white woman. The woman fell in love with the priest, but the priest refused to forsake his
love for the Egyptian Princess, and in a jealous rage the mysterious woman killed him
“with her magic.”

The Egyptian Princess fled, later giving birth to a son, who she charged with exacting
vengeance upon the the murderess of her beloved. However, the road to the mysterious
woman’s kingdom was treacherous, and several generations died in the attempt. Vincey--
and his son--are the last of the long family line.

Vincey dies, and Holly raises young Leo into a beautiful “Apollo-like” young man. When he
comes of age, Holly tells Leo the story of his family and they open a locked chest that contains
some archaeological evidence that the story is true.

In spite of their servant Job’s warnings, Leo decides to go, so of course all three pack up and
go to Africa. Inevitably they find the Lost City (an H. Rider Haggard staple) and its barbarous
inhabitants (also a staple). They also meet She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed, the same woman that
killed Leo’s ancestor over two thousand years before. In her regret for killing her love she’s
stayed alive, waiting until he reincarnated and they could be together at last (without that
pesky Egyptian Princess to stand in their way).

In addition to having some level of psychic power, She is so beautiful she can control anyone
who looks at her without a veil. She rules her isolated kingdom with an iron fist and anyone
who dares disobey her is shown no mercy. This evil, beautiful woman is who Leo has traveled
so far to find. But there’s a complication to his goal of avenging his family: yep, you guessed
it, Leo is the reincarnation of her “true love.”

If this synopsis seems a bit silly, it’s worse in the actual book. Maybe because she’s been  
isolated for two thousand years and finally has an audience, She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed has
a tendency toward long philosophical lectures about time, death, love, knowledge, women,
power, the mind…in short, it’s a good thing that Haggard explains that she can mind-control
people, because otherwise it would be unrealistic that anyone would stand there listening to
her drone on and on.

One of the main flaws of this book is that the characters lack dimension. Because the narrator
Holly is the polar opposite of She (“good but ugly” vs. “beautiful but evil”) I expected him to
contribute to the plot by possessing immunity to her feminine wiles. Instead, Holly falls in
love with She for no other reason than that she’s physically perfect, despite knowing the
monster beneath the facade.

As heroes go, Leo is even worse than Holly, being asleep for almost every major event, and
having a sort of “What ho, pip pip, dash it all” persona that clashes with the exotic and
terrifying atmosphere. I half thought that this was going to be what set Leo apart from all
his predecessors who tried to fulfil their quest, but no. Once he sees She he falls under her
spell and begins speaking in purple prose just like her.

Their sidekick Job is stereotypically conventional, unable and unwilling to understand
anything different from his own culture, and almost like a Jules Verne servant character
in his simplicity and cowardice. Haggard obviously wants us to feel pity, maybe even
amusement, at Job, but the fact is that Job is the only character with any common sense.

Finally, She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed herself is a problematic character. She’s not a likable
character on any level, and yet the other characters are so in thrall with her that she isn’t
really represented as a villain, either. For the time period, she’s a very strong female
character, and yet Haggard also instills her with all sorts of “feminine” characteristics that
make her come across as a needy ex-girlfriend more than an immortal queen.

One thing I do find interesting in reading this book is that Haggard was creating an
unconventional woman character--someone with authority, power, and control over men
--during the reign of Queen Victoria. There are many similarities between the fictional
character and the historical figure:

• Female ruler in a time when most women had very little authority
• Dictatorial, yet sometimes hesitant to make decisions or reliant on men’s opinions
• Mourn for lost loves for a long span of time (She waits almost two thousand years for her true love to return, while Victoria went into mourning for the rest of her life after her husband Albert’s death)
• Although they’re women in authority, they have a rather narrow view of women’s roles (Victoria’s own ideas of morality helped shape the restrictive Victorian era, while She has no empathy for the character of Ustane, a woman who loves Leo and refuses to relinquish her claim on him

She: A History of Adventure showcases all the worst things about Haggard’s writing--namely, his racial, cultural, and gender stereotypes--while also sporting a poorly-timed plot, cardboard characters, and long, erratic monologues of philosophical topics. Like I felt when reading Edgar Rice Burrough’s Tarzan of the Apes, I got the depressing sense that I’d already read the best of the author’s works at the outset, and now only can look forward to disappointment.