Themes and Characters
Since the debut of She, both critics and readers have delved into Haggard's narrative to unearth its underlying meanings. Some believe that the characters serve as allegorical representations of specific moral values or psychological states. Leo Vincey, Ustane (the native girl who loves him), and Job are typical literary archetypes. Leo is portrayed as the handsome and noble, yet not particularly bright, young hero. Ustane is the beautiful, self-sacrificing maiden in love with the hero. However, her defiance of Ayesha reveals that Ustane is a much stronger character than many female figures in adventure tales. Job, as his name suggests, is the long-suffering servant—devoted, honest, and humble. Like his Biblical counterpart, he patiently withstands the numerous challenges of the expedition. In most adventure stories, such characters symbolize certain virtues. Nonetheless, due to their relatively one-dimensional nature, they are less captivating than the main protagonists, Horace Holly and Ayesha.
Characters in adventure narratives often lack complexity because the focus is typically on the action. However, by portraying Horace Holly as a philosophical man deeply engaged with life's meaning, Haggard introduces significant themes without slowing down the plot. Holly's interest in human motivations and moral dilemmas, along with his ability to connect the story's events to a broader religious or philosophical context, adds depth to the action.
Readers immediately sympathize with Horace Holly due to Haggard's depiction of him as a noble character whose inner life has been marked by loneliness and suffering. Early in the story, readers learn that much of Holly's unhappiness stems from his physical unattractiveness. When the native priest, Billali, calls him "Baboon," it seems justified. Holly's self-descriptions verge on the grotesque, and he has come to believe he "was set apart by Nature to live alone, and draw comfort from her breast, and hers only. Women hated the sight of me." Despite being rejected and mocked by both women and men, Holly garners sympathy by accepting his appearance without letting bitterness or resentment taint his character.
This acceptance is no easy feat. Haggard accentuates Holly's physical unattractiveness by contrasting it with the near-superhuman beauty of his ward, Leo Vincey, who "looks like a statue of Apollo come to life." Leo's handsomeness is so striking that women fall for him at first sight, and when the two walk together, the stark contrast in their appearances astonishes onlookers. Ironically, this contrast is intensified by the profound bond between the two men. Although acutely aware and even envious of Leo's superior looks, Holly consistently acts in Leo's best interests. Horace Holly's extreme physical unattractiveness underscores the nobility of his character. By establishing Holly as a figure of great honesty and integrity, Haggard offers an ideal narrator for these extraordinary adventures.
Readers trust Horace to document events truthfully, steering clear of letting his imagination distort reality. In fact, Holly views imagination almost as a hindrance, believing it obstructs man's pursuit of truth. Consequently, when his logical perspective is challenged by the story's extraordinary events, his reputation as an honest and reliable narrator makes these unlikely occurrences even more surprising.
Despite his unattractive appearance, Holly is gifted with remarkable intelligence and a knack for intellectual and philosophical exploration. Ironically, although Ayesha is infatuated with Leo, she shares a deeper intellectual connection with Horace, who is the only character capable of engaging her in discussions on philosophical and historical matters. Yet, even as she acknowledges Horace's intellect, her obsession with Leo remains undiminished. Ayesha is convinced that Leo is the reincarnation of her lover, Kallikrates, whom she killed in a jealous rage two thousand years ago.
The novel brims with typical adventure...
(This entire section contains 1182 words.)
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story themes—mystery unraveling suspensefully, heroic battles against nature, and triumphs over adversaries through cleverness and courage. However, Horace's narration adds a contemplative intellectual depth often absent in such fiction. For instance, Holly observes the peculiar "marriage" customs of the Amahagger with a sociologist's curiosity, showing an open-minded attitude toward their culture. After describing the Amahagger women's practice of frequently changing husbands, Horace notes, "It is very curious to observe how the customs of mankind on this matter [marriage] vary in different countries, making morality an affair of latitude, and what is right and proper in one place wrong and improper in another." Horace sees nothing immoral in this custom, and his acceptance appears to reinforce his belief that all humans share certain core values.
Holly's philosophical exchanges with Ayesha highlight one of the novel's central themes: the battle between good and evil. Yet, Haggard's exploration of this theme is notably ambiguous, mainly due to his complex portrayal of Ayesha. On one hand, she is otherworldly in beauty and possesses a character that is both noble and awe-inspiring. She has endured great suffering for killing Kallikrates centuries earlier. She claims to have awaited his return for two thousand years, "tormented by the memory of a crime, tortured day and night with an unfulfilled desire without companionship, without comfort, without death." Her extraordinary longevity (she asserts that no earthly power can grant true immortality) has been a curse rather than a blessing. Although she killed Kallikrates in a jealous frenzy, her profound guilt and isolation have been so intense that readers may feel sympathy for her.
Yet, certain aspects of her character are unsettling. Her obsessive love for Leo, whom she believes to be the reincarnation of the long-dead Kallikrates, compels her to commit acts of significant cruelty. She kills Ustane because Ustane is her competitor for Leo's affection. Ayesha revels in the tremendous power she wields over mortals and delights in ruling the Amahagger through sheer fear. She takes pleasure in the fact that her otherworldly beauty causes Horace to fall hopelessly in love with her, creating a painful rift between him and Leo. Although she seems to admire and even respect Holly, she cruelly teases him by refusing to ever love him, knowing that once he sees her supernatural beauty, he will be tormented by that vision forever.
The darker side of Ayesha's personality can be best described by noting that she acknowledges no universal or natural laws beyond her own desires. She is entirely self-centered, and the "Power of Life" she possesses makes her perilous. She appears to embody a force that, as Holly realizes, could potentially threaten the very foundations of human civilization. However, Haggard's aim seems to be to portray Ayesha as so much larger than life that normal human concepts of "good" and "evil" do not apply to her, a perspective that Horace Holly himself adopts by the story's end. Upon reflection, Horace dismisses the idea that Ayesha's actions were driven by "evil tendencies" and even justifies her killing of Kallikrates, arguing that, as queen, she executed a subject who defied her. If there is a moral to this tale, it seems to be that for humans to aspire to divine knowledge or power is a sin. Horace Holly attributes Ayesha's dreadful demise to her hubristic meddling with divine power: "Thus she opposed herself against the eternal Law, and, strong though she was, by it was swept back to nothingness—swept back with shame and hideous mockery!"
