The simple act of maintaining British superiority over the inferior 'other', the Amahaggers, is undercut when Holly meets She. Holly is anxious to assert his position as superior to She and refuses to follow the custom of crawling to meet her. Holly believes that he is "an Englishman, and why, [he] asked [him]self should [he] creep into the presence of some savage woman" (141). But Holly's upright walk is undermined by the necessity of goose-stepping alongside the slithering Billali to keep pace.
Later, when She unveils before Holly, the proclaimed misogynist is reduced to lustful jealousy at his awareness that She will never be his. Haggard places Holly in a debased position where the Englishman regresses to his most savage instincts; in addition, Haggard symbolically denies Holly's ability to 'possess'. Holly's anxiety to assert his superiority is a reflection of the loss of confidence throughout Victorian society. While projecting superiority in their colonial transactions, the Victorians perceived their own culture to be regressing and their empire to be under threat from within and outside[1]. At the time, parallels were drawn between the British Empire and the Roman Empire: parallels that not only asserted British superiority, but also acted as a fatalist warning of future disintegration[2]. Holly's fall reflects the constructedness of the superiority projected over the Amahaggers. The British prided themselves on their state of progress, producing and reading texts that asserted a sense of superiority. These texts also depicted an 'other' who was inferior and thus justified British intervention and rule. The novel initially presents the Amahaggers as the inferior 'other' but then presents She as an anomaly that, if not superior, is equal to the British[3]. Drawing on British fears of regression, this scene describes She's reign of the imagination and implicitly proposes that Britain's vast empire is founded on the same illusion. Holly's degradation emphasises that even a scholar can regress, and the basic instincts suppressed for civilization can easily creep to the surface. Haggard explores the possibility that there is little to prevent Britain from following the cyclical pattern of past empires.
The paradox Holly faces is that, while aware of the cruelties of She's reign, he cannot help but be attracted to her supernatural beauty. Like Leo in the earlier fight, She contains a "terrible beauty" that consists of both the despised elements of the savage combined with the aesthetic qualities celebrated by the civilized. When Holly enters She's chamber, he wonders what lies behind the curtain: will She take on the form of a "naked savage queen, a languishing Oriental beauty, or a nineteenth-century young lady drinking afternoon tea?" (141). All of these three possibilities imagined by Holly reveal the West's projection onto a threatening Other of its own fears of regression, which could be catalyzed from outside the empire or even from within its own confines. In many ways She takes on all three of these feared stereotypes. She is the native on the periphery who threatens the collapse of the Empire with her plans of invasion. She is the "Oriental beauty" who seduces men and undermines their superiority causing them to regress to their most basic instincts. When Holly enters She's chamber it is described as an exotic Harem. The perfume, curtains, and the mystery of the identity behind the veil all create an atmosphere of exotic temptation. She is also imaged as the threatening white woman whose vast knowledge of traditionally male disciplines reflects the aims of the New Woman movement in Britain[4]. While on the surface a young lady drinking tea appears non-threatening, the earlier scene involving Job's Lady acts as a fatalist warning of the potential mayhem that will erupt if female assertions for equality are taken into account. Later in the novel, She refers to her reign as constructed upon the "imagination". The use of Holly's imagination to wonder what form She will take suggests that Britain's central position of superiority and determination is also only a construct.
[1] For a general discussion of Britain's fears of degeneration see: Lynn Pykett (ed.), Reading Fin De Siecle Fictions (Essex: Longman, 1996), pp.1-21.
[3] For an interpretation of She as a reflection of imperialistic Britain see: Laura Chrisman, "The Imperial Unconscious? Representations of Imperial Discourse' Critical Quarterly, vol. 32, no. 3(1990), pp39-57.
[4] S. Arata, Fictions of Loss, p.98.