The Gendering of History in She

H. Rider Haggard’s 1887 She is not merely an intriguing exemplar of the male quest romances that mirrored and furthered imperialist initiatives; as critics have persuasively asserted, She is also a thinly disguised allegorical admonition to recognize and dispel the threat that the New Woman posed to late-Victorian society. The novel’s thematic valences reflect a unique cultural moment: the Woman Question that had vexed the nineteenth century intensified during the fin de siècle with the appearance of the societal and literary figure of the New Woman who foregrounded the clash of perspectives on separate spheres, degeneracy, immorality, and women’s rights. To Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, for instance, “the all-knowing, all-powerful” She “was in certain ways an entirely New Woman.” ¹ To Nina Auerbach, She conveys anxieties about “national and domestic reality,” including “the learned and crusading ‘new woman.’” ² To Ann L. Ardis, the novel “anticipates all the questions to be asked of the New Woman.” ³ Although agreeing with the tenor of these readings, I depart from them in contending that part of the ideological force unleashed in She derives from a complex subtext that reflects the Victorian valorization of history. Integral to the novel’s condemnation of the New Woman is a gendered opposition defined by historical acuity or apathy. An attentiveness to history is firmly gendered masculine and unequivocally validated over a corresponding lack of historical sensibility, evidenced in the character of She, through this subtle binarism pervading the text.

She’s frantic attempt to privilege male historicity over female ahistoricity represents the most insistent example of a labyrinthine series of binaries that further the novel’s ideological work in condemning the New Woman. Linking these binaries are the temporal underpinnings they share, for the linear time of history associated with the masculine civilizing mission is valorized over the nonlinear time conventionally associated with female subjectivity through procreativity, natural rhythms, and infinitude. This essentialist distinction, demarcated in Julia Kristeva’s important essay on “Women’s Time,” reflects the Victorian mindset in a century marked by an overwhelming interest in time. ⁴ Whether explicitly or indirectly, discourses on time played a significant role in the construction of gender positions in late-century novels responding to the New Woman. The best-selling She manipulates such discourses to reassert rigid gender roles, distancing the New Woman avatar from linear time through her affiliations with paganism, myth, nature, gothic immortality, and devolution, as well as ahistoricity. Through persistent attempts to delineate strict gender positions by temporal maneuvering, the novel reveals unsettling slippages between them but ultimately strives to contain the New Woman threat by annihilating the unruly She at closure.

She’s disdain for empowered women conforms to Haggard’s misogynous master narrative in his fin de siècle oeuvre. For example, in the 1885 King Solomon’s Mines, the hideous Gagool, a “frightful vulture-headed old creature,” wields her power to control the English adventurers’ access to the legendary rich mines. ⁵ The 1887 Allan Quatermain more explicitly assaults the New Woman figure in sharply contrasting female subject positions—idealized submission versus untoward strength—through the depiction of two sister queens. The White Queen resembles “an angel out of heaven” who exhibits “the nature of loving woman” and frequently addresses her husband as lord, whereas the Lady of the Night plots (twice) to murder her sister and unleashes a devastating civil war, even leading the battle charge. ⁶ Not unexpectedly, the “good” version of womanhood ultimately prevails. In the 1889 Cleopatra, the title character is a transgressive New Woman figure who takes on quasi-divine status in designating herself as “Isis come to earth.” ⁷ Satanic resonances position Isis as a false god who, much like the New Woman, has exceeded her rightful role, evidenced by periodic switches between meek female and diabolic presence. In the 1898 Elissa; or the Doom of Zimbabwe—an almost unknown Haggard text—the main character is a priestess of the “she-devil” Baaltis and is tainted as a sorceress as much for her sex as her heathenism. Requiring no “witcheries . . . beyond those lips...