The scene
can be interpreted as a "ceremonial assertion of phallic authority".
The pillar of flame, a phallic symbol, destroys She and reasserts the masculine
over the threatening female Other. Earlier in the novel She is presented
as a threat to the male homosocial unit. She draws Holly away from Leo when
he is sick, and undermines their relationship through the jealousy her beauty
produces; hence, her death results in the male relationship being reaffirmed.
Holly is anxious to hide the remains of She before Leo wakes in order to
protect his adopted son from seeing the hideous sight; this marks a return
to his role as protective father.
She's outstretched arms intimate the fear of the feminine
other, threatening to draw the male down into an 'other' world and lead to
the demise of the British race.
During She's devolution, her skin is described as "dirty brown and yellow"
(293). Haggard draws upon fears the British people developed towards the
black Native and the Asian "yellow peril". Through describing She's skin
as containing these racial others, Haggard is drawing on the popular view
in Victorian times that the other could be found within white females, whose
feminist assertions undermined the security of the Empire.
Haggard's emphasis that the black bundle was the "same woman" who had stood
before the explorers as the epitome of feminine beauty reflects the concern
that the Other rests within the British people themselves.
This interpretation of the scene as a reassertion of
male superiority is supported by the description of Holly and Leo as Adam's
sons (291). In this role they seek revenge against She who represents Eve,
a threat to Britain's male-centred 'Paradise'.
This scene can also be interpreted as undermining Britain's superiority over
the 'other'. In many ways She is constructed not as the 'other' but as equal
to the British. Earlier in the text, when discussing her genealogy with
Holly, she reveals that unlike the degenerate Amahaggers, she comes from
a pure line of Arabic descendants. Laura Chrisman presents She as an "effective
proxy" of the West due to her exclusion from it.
Hence, when She describes her plans of invasion, Holly wonders if the West
would benefit from someone like She becoming monarch, and leading an infinite
and supreme reign. She becomes a reflection of "imperialism's fantasy of
its own power".
The reader witnesses a reversal of colonial fantasies as She comes to represent
the cultural guilt of white explorers through her replication of their actions
of appropriation and exploitation.
If She is a sign of imperialism's "ideality and supremacy", her destruction
undermines this political discourse.
She's devolution reveals imperialism as an empty political ideology built
on mythical constructions, rather than something natural founded in biology
and Victorian anthropology. When Holly watches a change come over She, he
wonders whether the "intense light [from the flame]
had produced an optical illusion". Here the question emerges as to whether
imperialism is no more than a visual illusion, flawed through its subjectivity
(293).
When describing She's demise, Haggard depicts her in
a number of animal forms progressing from a baboon, to a child, then a tortoise,
and finally a monkey. Haggard is drawing on theories of social anthropology
with which his Victorian audience would have been familiar. Holly describes
She's destruction as a result of the Eternal laws and Providence, removing
a perceived threat that could have "revolutionized society" (295). She's
destruction is Providence's natural selection, for if allowed to survive,
She had the potential of catalyzing degeneration in the white race
.
If She reflects the British Empire, this suggests that Britain's continued
expansion will lead to its degeneration
.
Haggard draws on the paradox of imperialism: imperialism does not just shape
the other, but inevitably leads also to the colonized being affected by contact.
She's final words to Leo—that she will return—reflect the cyclic patterns
of Empires.