Josie Carter

H. Rider Haggard's She was published during a period in Victorian history marked by its preoccupation with a pessimistic sense of fatalism and the novel reflects the Victorian paradoxical view of 'progress' as a double-edged sword^[1]. On one side the British sense of progress instilled a feeling of superiority over other 'uncivilized' nations, but conversely it also produced the fear that British society, having reached its peak, would inevitably degenerate.

    'Degeneration' was the buzzword circulating in late Victorian society^[2]. It encompassed British anxieties over the perceived impending collapse of culture and Empire, and the subsequent physical and moral decay of the British race. This essay explores the fear of degeneration through three pivotal scenes in the novel She: the cannibal feast, Holly's meeting of She, and She's destruction. Each scene marks a change in how the white explorers perceive their race. From an initial self-assuredness in their superiority, the white explorers soon face the doubts catalysed by She's supernatural beauty and intellect. The anomaly of She is her ability to reflect the pinnacle of Western aspirations, while also containing elements of the despised 'other' within. She's destruction becomes a necessary step for the explorers' reinstatement of their superiority and reaffirmation of Britain's role as ruler of the Empire.

            This essay argues that Haggard's She is remarkable for the exploration of paradoxes inherent in imperialist ideology. Haggard implicitly questions imperialism's mission of projecting light into the dark regions of the globe through paralleling it with She's reign founded on the imagination. Would her reign have been possible without her supernatural beauty or, in a wider context, can imperialism survive if the image of British superiority is not reflected back? Haggard does not simply construct the image of a stereotypical primitive race justifying British expansion; he also explores how, through the act of colonizing, Britain is forced to view the threat of degeneration as catalyzed not by the native, but by their own nation's problematic reflection.