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3.16 AVERAGE
3.16 AVERAGE
I have read a few reviews that discredited this novel for its racism. Don't get me wrong, its very racist; but context is essential here. This is written while Europeans are just exploring the inner content of Africa for the first time, it comes on the tales of the stories of Doctor Livingston and I think it intentionally mimics the style of those stories/journals. It is intentionally shocking, and graphic, because that was the type of story the people of the time wanted to read.
Sorry, HR Haggard's "knowledge"of Africa is a joke. This was all about a Victorian presupposition and catering to the ignorance and sensibilities of the time. As for the obvious sexual psychology of the author as projected onto his protagonists, I will leave that to folks with more time on their hands. It was entertaining in a naive and ridiculous way though.
"The world is a great mart, my Holly, where all things are for sale to whom bids the highest in the currency of desires"
"The world is a great mart, my Holly, where all things are for sale to whom bids the highest in the currency of desires"
"In the face of all we had seen it was difficult for us ordinary reasoning men any longer to doubt its truth, and therefore at last, with humble hearts and a deep sense of the impotence of human knowledge, and the insolence of its assumption that denies that to be possible which it has no experience of, we laid ourselves down to sleep, leaving our fates in the hands of that watching Providence which had thus chosen to allow us to draw the veil of human ignorance, and reveal to us for good or evil some glimpses of the possibilities of life."
and finally "For deep love unsatisfied is the hell of noble hearts and a portion of the accursed, but love that is mirrored back more perfect from the soul of our desired doth fashion wings to lift us above ourselves, and makes us what we might be."
A mysterious package left for a son leads two men -- Leo and Holly on an adventure to Egypt, where they discover links to Leo's past and a story that is an archeologist's dream. I really enjoyed the overall story, but found the writing to be somewhat dense and dry. It's one of those books I'm glad I read, but I probably won't ever pick up again.
She-who-must-be-obeyed...
When Vincey knows that he is dying, he asks his friend Horace Holly to become guardian to his young son, Leo, whose mother died in childbirth. Vincey also gives Holly an iron casket, extracting a promise that it is to be opened only when Leo reaches the age of twenty-five. It proves, Vincey says, that they can trace their lineage back to the Ancient Egyptians, and will offer Leo a quest so fabulous that it sounds almost fantastical; but Vincey assures Holly his own journeys to Africa have convinced him of its truth. And so Holly does as Vincey requests, learning to love and be loved by the young Leo, and educating him in the ancient languages, Greek, Hebrew and especially Arabic, as the elder Vincey had specified. Leo grows up tall, strong, brave and handsome (naturally), and when his twenty-fifth birthday arrives, they open the casket. Inside are documents telling the story of a long ago ancestor of Leo, Kallikrates, who was once loved by a powerful and immortal Queen. Kallikrates refused to return her love, remaining faithful to his wife, and so the Queen, in a fit of jealous rage, killed him. His wife escaped and soon bore a son, and left a challenge to him and all his descendants to seek revenge for Kallikrates’ death. Many have tried and failed, many more have done nothing except pass the challenge on to the next generation, and now, after two thousand years have passed, the quest becomes Leo’s. The casket also contains a potsherd – a piece of broken pottery – on which all of the descendants have in turn marked their name.
Holly thinks this is all nonsense, but Leo is determined to at least investigate and tempts Holly to join him with the prospect of some jolly big-game hunting as they travel into the African interior. Naturally this is irresistible, and so they set off accompanied by their servant, Job. They find the river referred to in the documents, and are promptly captured by members of the Amahaggar tribes, who have been told to expect their arrival and to bring them to She-who-must-be-obeyed, Ayesha, the white Queen who has ruled for thousands of years, while she waits for her lost love, Kallikrates, to be reincarnated and return to her…
Another really thrilling African adventure from Haggard, very well-written in adventure-story style – i.e., not too literary, fast-paced, full of action, with elements of fantasy and wonderful horror. (Of course it also has elements of racism, outdated attitudes a-plenty, and lots of killing of both wildlife and humans, but what else would you expect of a story from this era?)
Holly is our narrator, and there are lots of great descriptions of the natural world and of the customs of the Amahaggars, a tribe in which women have rights (to an extent) and choose their mates, though not for life. One beautiful young woman, Ustane, immediately chooses the golden-haired Adonis that is Leo, and quite frankly Leo doesn’t seem to mind this at all. But the tribe are not welcoming to strangers and have some particularly savage customs in how they deal with them, which I won’t go into because it would be a spoiler for one of the best horror scenes in the book!
Ayesha, usually called simply She, is a wonderful creation. Is she a proto-feminist? She is strong, intelligent and determined, and while she is cruel, she can explain her cruelty as convincingly as all the best dictators can. She is deeply interested in politics and the world, and immediately questions Holly as to what has happened in the last two thousand years. She is ambitious: as soon as her long wait for Kallikrates is over, she intends to leave this place and go into the wider world, where Holly fears she will soon replace even our own beloved Queen Victoria – who can stop an immortal ruler? Or is she a misogynistic realisation of male fear of powerful women? She is the ultimate temptress, enslaving any man to whom she reveals her beautiful face (and body – let’s not forget her body). She makes men weak, submissive, and takes away their free will. And even in her love she is cruel, as the original Kallikrates discovered. Or is she a representation of Victorian imperial anxiety – the fear that one day our vast colonies would become more powerful than the imperial centre, perhaps overthrow us, perhaps even invade and rule us in their turn? Is she a figure to be loved, or feared, or pitied? Perhaps all three.
She is, of course, white, which makes her somewhat problematic to modern eyes, ruling as she does over the savage African Amahaggars. It would be easy to say that she had to be white because Victorian sensibilities couldn’t have coped with Leo falling in love with a black woman. But remember Ustane – if Victorians didn’t have an issue with Leo indulging in a bit of hanky-panky with her (and Haggard makes it clear, in that Victorian way of saying without actually saying, that hanky-panky was indeed being indulged in) then why would they have had a problem with a black Ayesha? Or is hanky-panky OK, but marriage a no-no? Or is it more the idea of a black monarch that is the problem, rather than a black lover? Maybe it’s as simple as that Haggard’s ideal of female beauty happened to reflect the women of his own society. Whatever, it’s one of these colonial mindset things that we just have to be able to accept if we’re going to read these books, and in my opinion they’re well worth reading.
Thrilling action scenes, melodrama, exalted passion, some humour, occasional religious musings, a touch of fantasy and some great horror scenes – I loved it. For me, King Solomon’s Mines will always be his greatest story, and Gagool trumps Ayesha in terms of Terrifying Women, but I can quite see why many people rate this as his best. Best thing to do is read both!
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
When Vincey knows that he is dying, he asks his friend Horace Holly to become guardian to his young son, Leo, whose mother died in childbirth. Vincey also gives Holly an iron casket, extracting a promise that it is to be opened only when Leo reaches the age of twenty-five. It proves, Vincey says, that they can trace their lineage back to the Ancient Egyptians, and will offer Leo a quest so fabulous that it sounds almost fantastical; but Vincey assures Holly his own journeys to Africa have convinced him of its truth. And so Holly does as Vincey requests, learning to love and be loved by the young Leo, and educating him in the ancient languages, Greek, Hebrew and especially Arabic, as the elder Vincey had specified. Leo grows up tall, strong, brave and handsome (naturally), and when his twenty-fifth birthday arrives, they open the casket. Inside are documents telling the story of a long ago ancestor of Leo, Kallikrates, who was once loved by a powerful and immortal Queen. Kallikrates refused to return her love, remaining faithful to his wife, and so the Queen, in a fit of jealous rage, killed him. His wife escaped and soon bore a son, and left a challenge to him and all his descendants to seek revenge for Kallikrates’ death. Many have tried and failed, many more have done nothing except pass the challenge on to the next generation, and now, after two thousand years have passed, the quest becomes Leo’s. The casket also contains a potsherd – a piece of broken pottery – on which all of the descendants have in turn marked their name.
Holly thinks this is all nonsense, but Leo is determined to at least investigate and tempts Holly to join him with the prospect of some jolly big-game hunting as they travel into the African interior. Naturally this is irresistible, and so they set off accompanied by their servant, Job. They find the river referred to in the documents, and are promptly captured by members of the Amahaggar tribes, who have been told to expect their arrival and to bring them to She-who-must-be-obeyed, Ayesha, the white Queen who has ruled for thousands of years, while she waits for her lost love, Kallikrates, to be reincarnated and return to her…
Another really thrilling African adventure from Haggard, very well-written in adventure-story style – i.e., not too literary, fast-paced, full of action, with elements of fantasy and wonderful horror. (Of course it also has elements of racism, outdated attitudes a-plenty, and lots of killing of both wildlife and humans, but what else would you expect of a story from this era?)
Holly is our narrator, and there are lots of great descriptions of the natural world and of the customs of the Amahaggars, a tribe in which women have rights (to an extent) and choose their mates, though not for life. One beautiful young woman, Ustane, immediately chooses the golden-haired Adonis that is Leo, and quite frankly Leo doesn’t seem to mind this at all. But the tribe are not welcoming to strangers and have some particularly savage customs in how they deal with them, which I won’t go into because it would be a spoiler for one of the best horror scenes in the book!
Ayesha, usually called simply She, is a wonderful creation. Is she a proto-feminist? She is strong, intelligent and determined, and while she is cruel, she can explain her cruelty as convincingly as all the best dictators can. She is deeply interested in politics and the world, and immediately questions Holly as to what has happened in the last two thousand years. She is ambitious: as soon as her long wait for Kallikrates is over, she intends to leave this place and go into the wider world, where Holly fears she will soon replace even our own beloved Queen Victoria – who can stop an immortal ruler? Or is she a misogynistic realisation of male fear of powerful women? She is the ultimate temptress, enslaving any man to whom she reveals her beautiful face (and body – let’s not forget her body). She makes men weak, submissive, and takes away their free will. And even in her love she is cruel, as the original Kallikrates discovered. Or is she a representation of Victorian imperial anxiety – the fear that one day our vast colonies would become more powerful than the imperial centre, perhaps overthrow us, perhaps even invade and rule us in their turn? Is she a figure to be loved, or feared, or pitied? Perhaps all three.
She is, of course, white, which makes her somewhat problematic to modern eyes, ruling as she does over the savage African Amahaggars. It would be easy to say that she had to be white because Victorian sensibilities couldn’t have coped with Leo falling in love with a black woman. But remember Ustane – if Victorians didn’t have an issue with Leo indulging in a bit of hanky-panky with her (and Haggard makes it clear, in that Victorian way of saying without actually saying, that hanky-panky was indeed being indulged in) then why would they have had a problem with a black Ayesha? Or is hanky-panky OK, but marriage a no-no? Or is it more the idea of a black monarch that is the problem, rather than a black lover? Maybe it’s as simple as that Haggard’s ideal of female beauty happened to reflect the women of his own society. Whatever, it’s one of these colonial mindset things that we just have to be able to accept if we’re going to read these books, and in my opinion they’re well worth reading.
Thrilling action scenes, melodrama, exalted passion, some humour, occasional religious musings, a touch of fantasy and some great horror scenes – I loved it. For me, King Solomon’s Mines will always be his greatest story, and Gagool trumps Ayesha in terms of Terrifying Women, but I can quite see why many people rate this as his best. Best thing to do is read both!
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
Its literary historical and indeed broadly cultural importance seems beyond doubt, even if only with regard to the many films and other adaptations it has inspired. In itself, I found the novel rather boring and trite. Haggard just is not a very interesting or terribly good writer, so these adventure novels of his can't claim to have become classics in the way that the novels of Robert Louis Stevenson, for instance, have.
His dialogues especially can get really tiresome, with all the thee-ing and thou-ing and the stilted phrasing to convey that they're speaking in different languages. It just ends up sounding silly and bombastic.
The OUP edition has a good introduction and interesting (although incidentally a little pedestrian) footnotes.
His dialogues especially can get really tiresome, with all the thee-ing and thou-ing and the stilted phrasing to convey that they're speaking in different languages. It just ends up sounding silly and bombastic.
The OUP edition has a good introduction and interesting (although incidentally a little pedestrian) footnotes.
This is a book that absolutely must be read with one foot in the past. Make that both feet!
It has an almost Lovecraftian weirdness to it. Haggard takes a strange delight in describing the deep, dark places at length. I love this book every time I read it, because I don't judge it by today's standards.
It has an almost Lovecraftian weirdness to it. Haggard takes a strange delight in describing the deep, dark places at length. I love this book every time I read it, because I don't judge it by today's standards.
Pro-tip: it's never a good idea to open mysterious old chests bequeathed to you by your dad--especially if he dies in shifty circumstances. Ever.
If you should so choose to crack this dusty old book open, be prepared for lengthy dialogues on scholarly obscura, historical detritus, and ancient feels, as well as ADVENTURE (according to its subtitle). Because the prose of H. Rider Haggard's She is as densely and elaborately Victorian as it gets. There's stirring descriptions of the African landscape and exciting escapades with crocodiles, but also walls and walls of text about how time is really old and also how it sucks to be immortal.
At the heart of She is the story of Ayesha, a woman who waited thousands and thousands of years for the man she loved to be reincarnated. Of course, there's the whole trifling matter of her murdering him for loving someone else back in the day, but details, am I right?
Rather than venturing forth from her mountain kingdom to rain terror and conquest down on the rest of the world with her ancient earth magic powers and terrible beauty, Ayesha waited for him in her cave. Her hobbies to while away the centuries included hanging out with his perfectly preserved corpse and cursing his long-dead girlfriend every night. That's dedication. I mean, I can barely remember to take all my allergy meds in a day.
All her waiting pays off when Holly shows up with Leo, who is the very spitting image of her murdered beloved. Here is her chance to finally venture forth from her caves with him immortalized at her side (as a living person, rather than the mummified corpse, which is presumably preferable)
This, however, is not a love story.
It's the story of good old Victorian racism and misogyny holding up in the face of dangerous foreign cultures. Our narrator Horace Holly is a product of his time -- and his face. Holly's an intellectual molded by a combination of Western superiority and bitter misogyny for being rejected for his gorilla-like features.
But he's a nice, smart guy so we're supposed to overlook all that.
It's kind of a shame. Despite everything, the story is a fascinating study of female empowerment in the Victorian age. Yes, it's because of the murdered lover that this whole story happens, but Ayesha reaches the pinnacle of her unearthly powers through her own doing. Holly and Leo, two independently-minded British men, are held powerless and spellbound by Ayesha, who wields her feminine authority with majesty and grace.
There's a lot that can be read into Ayesha and the implications of her authority. I'm sure the idea of a woman ruling over men was startlingly progressive for the time period (wonder if Queen Victoria had anything to do with it), but in She, it's portrayed as something alien and terrifying, rather than a possible alternative. Patriarchal good triumphs as Ayesha's arrogant confidence in her power ultimately leads to her downfall.
If you should so choose to crack this dusty old book open, be prepared for lengthy dialogues on scholarly obscura, historical detritus, and ancient feels, as well as ADVENTURE (according to its subtitle). Because the prose of H. Rider Haggard's She is as densely and elaborately Victorian as it gets. There's stirring descriptions of the African landscape and exciting escapades with crocodiles, but also walls and walls of text about how time is really old and also how it sucks to be immortal.
At the heart of She is the story of Ayesha, a woman who waited thousands and thousands of years for the man she loved to be reincarnated. Of course, there's the whole trifling matter of her murdering him for loving someone else back in the day, but details, am I right?
Rather than venturing forth from her mountain kingdom to rain terror and conquest down on the rest of the world with her ancient earth magic powers and terrible beauty, Ayesha waited for him in her cave. Her hobbies to while away the centuries included hanging out with his perfectly preserved corpse and cursing his long-dead girlfriend every night. That's dedication. I mean, I can barely remember to take all my allergy meds in a day.
All her waiting pays off when Holly shows up with Leo, who is the very spitting image of her murdered beloved. Here is her chance to finally venture forth from her caves with him immortalized at her side (as a living person, rather than the mummified corpse, which is presumably preferable)
This, however, is not a love story.
It's the story of good old Victorian racism and misogyny holding up in the face of dangerous foreign cultures. Our narrator Horace Holly is a product of his time -- and his face. Holly's an intellectual molded by a combination of Western superiority and bitter misogyny for being rejected for his gorilla-like features.
But he's a nice, smart guy so we're supposed to overlook all that.
It's kind of a shame. Despite everything, the story is a fascinating study of female empowerment in the Victorian age. Yes, it's because of the murdered lover that this whole story happens, but Ayesha reaches the pinnacle of her unearthly powers through her own doing. Holly and Leo, two independently-minded British men, are held powerless and spellbound by Ayesha, who wields her feminine authority with majesty and grace.
There's a lot that can be read into Ayesha and the implications of her authority. I'm sure the idea of a woman ruling over men was startlingly progressive for the time period (wonder if Queen Victoria had anything to do with it), but in She, it's portrayed as something alien and terrifying, rather than a possible alternative. Patriarchal good triumphs as Ayesha's arrogant confidence in her power ultimately leads to her downfall.
Classic adventure novel from H. Rider Haggard telling the story of an Immortal Queen in an unknown land in Africa, simply referred to as She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed. It was serialised in 1886-87 as was the custom of the day.
The story is told in the style of most late 19th century novels, namely a narrator - in this case the author - tells the story as narrated to him. Mr. Holly is the protector of a young boy, Vincey and accompanies him in a voyage to Africa, to find the remains of an ancestor buried in a mysterious land. Vince is the descendant of Kallikrates, who is in love with Amenartas of the Royal House of the Pharaohs in Egypt. However they had to flee South and encountered this strange Queen who had her eyes on Kallikrates and kills him when he refuses to join her, Amenartas barely escaping and giving birth to her child in Athens, the child being the ancestor of Vincey.
They board a ship and travel to Africa, finally reaching the mysterious land and meeting the terrible Queen Ayesha, who claims to be still alive after 2000 years from the time of the story.
Haggard has a style similar to Edgar Rice Burroughs in his Tarzan or The Land that Time Forgot stories. The story is interesting, although the style might be a bit heavy for today's reader. Still, if you like 19th or early 20th century adventure novels, this could be one for you.
The story is told in the style of most late 19th century novels, namely a narrator - in this case the author - tells the story as narrated to him. Mr. Holly is the protector of a young boy, Vincey and accompanies him in a voyage to Africa, to find the remains of an ancestor buried in a mysterious land. Vince is the descendant of Kallikrates, who is in love with Amenartas of the Royal House of the Pharaohs in Egypt. However they had to flee South and encountered this strange Queen who had her eyes on Kallikrates and kills him when he refuses to join her, Amenartas barely escaping and giving birth to her child in Athens, the child being the ancestor of Vincey.
They board a ship and travel to Africa, finally reaching the mysterious land and meeting the terrible Queen Ayesha, who claims to be still alive after 2000 years from the time of the story.
Haggard has a style similar to Edgar Rice Burroughs in his Tarzan or The Land that Time Forgot stories. The story is interesting, although the style might be a bit heavy for today's reader. Still, if you like 19th or early 20th century adventure novels, this could be one for you.
If you want to read a novel that is the height of the racist, sexist 19th c imperialist adventure tale, you couldn't do better than this. Entertaining but not sophisticated.
Too simplistic (even with its Greek and Latin inscriptions) to woo me.