Customer Reviews

She

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

While studying at Cambridge, Ludwig Horace Holly receives a very strange visit from a long-time friend. In failing health, this friend gives Holly charge of his 5 year-old son Leo, and a mysterious chest, which he is charged not to open until the boy's twenty-fifth birthday. Twenty years later, the boy has grown to handsome manhood, and the chest is opened to reveal a family history stretching back some 23 centuries to ancient Egypt. Interestingly, included is the family's attempts to get revenge on an immortal white women who rules a tribe in Africa.

The young man, Leo, becomes fascinated with the tale, and draws Holly onto an adventure to Africa. Passing through danger upon danger, the companions finally find themselves in the hands of "She-who-must-be-obeyed".

While the story is dated and somewhat laughable by modern standards, it is very well written and more riveting than the above introduction may suggest. If nothing else, this book is an excellent example of Nineteenth Century fantasy literature.

H. Rider Haggard's style is the ornate, 19th century melodrama style. There is none of the stylish repartee of Conan Doyle or the sharp characterization of Dickens. Despite its literary flaws, H. Rider Haggard's vivid imagination make "She" an enduring classic.

"She", or "She-who-must-be-obeyed" , a.k.a Ayesha, is a mysterious and powerful queen in a subterranean land laced with horrible terrors in darkest Africa. To disregard her word is instant death for her savage subjects. Holly and his adopted nephew Leo explore through her realm and after nearly getting murdered in the most horrible way, meet up with She. Leo is dying from a fever, and Holly, an explorer and a man educated in languages and the classics, contends with Ayesha. The very ill Leo is meanwhile attended by Ustane, a local gal who marries herself to him in the local custom of girl-takes-boy and stands by him loyally. Who is this local girl? Is she really just a native lass as she seems? And what has She to do with Ustane? Rider's description of Ayesha is brilliant, Holly is a sympathetic character and the ending of the tale is spectacular. The only reason I give three stars is that the writing is murky, convuluted and overly ornate. Still, when Rider describes scenes of high drama, horror or beauty, he cannot be beat.

This fantasy adventure story takes place in England and later transports the reader to the bowels of Central Africa. The story starts when Horace Holly makes a deal with his dying friend. His friend, knowing the end is near, has a young son, Leo, who he leaves an iron trunk to. Horace is instructed not to open the chest until the boy's 25th birthday. In addition, Horace must take care of Leo and raise him.

On Leo's 25th birthday, Horace and Leo open the chest and in it they discover that Leo is part of a historic lineage which goes back to the ancient Egyptians. They also discover that everlasting life can be found off the coast of Africa by bathing in a magical fire. They soon venture to the hidden area to discover an ancient race of cannibalistic people who are lead by Ayesha, otherwise known as She. She is a very beautiful temptress and has the secret to everlasting life. Also, she was in love with Leo's family centuries ago. When Leo arrives, She is much smitten with him.

This book was well written and the adventure well thought out. The level of detail that Haggard uses to describe the Amahagger's (the tribe Leo and Holly discover) were extraordinary. She is easily understood to be a sophisticated woman who has strong powers of life and death over her subjects. However, I found the book a little hard to read. The lengthy paragraphs that detailed the Amahagger society were not needed and slowed the pace of the book. Still not a bad adventure book but the pace kept being diverted by lengthy descriptions.

This is one of the few books that J. R. R. Tolkien admitted had influenced him. C. S. Lewis wrote appreciatively about Haggard (see the book ON STORIES by Lewis). There's a fond essay on Haggard by Graham Greene, too.

I love the way Haggard fits out his story with all sorts of "authentic" details -- lengthy inscriptions in Greek, Latin, and Renaissance English, found on an old piece of pottery passed down for many generations in the Vincey family. Really gets you in the mood. Then our heroes head for mysterious Africa -- a continent about which Haggard knew more than many of his contemporaries, having lived there.

The story gets more and more fantastic, delightfully indulging in what Edmund Burke called the SUBLIME. (Hint: if you're writing a paper on SHE, that is a good topic idea.) I've been reading this book since I was a kid & am reading it again, with much enjoyment, right now.

Haggard's metaphysical ideas, though, haven't worn well. Haggard wrote a sequel about his enchantress, Ayesha, called Wisdom's Daughter. As C. S. Lewis quipped, If Ayesha really was Wisdom's Daughter, she certainly didn't take after her parent.

When the young psychologist Sigmund Freud picked up this book, it presented him with the idea of the Anima or eternal feminine, which as a concept was picked and enlarged by his peers, metaphysicians and astrologers (e.g. Liz Greene's work on relationship astrology). That such a catchy idea came from what was effectively an off the shelf best seller with no literary pretentions indicates just what a fun and fascinating read it presents, especially for a young man who wishes a read encapsulating the perfect specimen of womankind.
This particular edition is good for it contains an excellent introduction by Professor D. Karlin with extensive and helpful notes. Karlin makes it clear that the book is a sort of fantasy within a fantasy and the joke is usually on us. It's contents are so "out there" that the author is at pains to state "every word is true" through his chosen first person mouthpiece, and he adds several details that makes the book's events plausible while you are in it.
The book is a masterpiece of archetypes including the Anima, acient civilization and archaeology, exploration, hunting and Africa as she used to be. It further represents the last mysterious possibilities that could be squeezed out of a world whose potential to amaze was fast disappearing due to the advent of transport and exploration. It is an old fashioned Indiana Jones type epic with explorers making a big discovery that could shake the British Empire to its very core.
The elements come from Haggard's own association and love of Africa (he includes the extinct Quagga one of the descriptions)
and his contact with an angelic woman with whom his fascination was was not satiated as he was married already. There is a great deal of swashbuckling adventure hived off from Livingstone, Egyptology, linguistics, classics and history as well of prevailing views and outlooks - but all this is eventually fused in a saga that is anything but boring in the same dynamic and suspensive style of bestsellers of the time (serialised in popular magazines) as S. Holmes and Jules Verne.
Needless to say, the book is over the top even for that time and is a literary equivalent of Jurassic Park, taken up by everyone but academia and the gatekeepers of high culture.
The subtext has disturbing and provocative elements which could by identified as mysoginy, soft porn and the frustrated psyche of the average young male at the time. She is destroyed in the end and provides the perfect excuse for both the principal male protagonists to give up women.
Haggard himself has recently been discovered to have had a secret relationship which bore him an illegitimate child and we also realise he was not really an imperialist and supported free tendencies for Africans in the shadow of imperialism. He predicted the inevitable independence of African states and the imperial overtones in the book should not be misread as jingoistic.
For people too rushed to pour over Trollope or Dickens, this is Victoriana at its greatest with many interesting contemporary themes including the theory of evolution which reads extremely fast. It is a window into history and an ultimate fantasy exploring the sources of life and immortality itself and represents something made in a hurry in the "white heat" of the author's anvil. A performance he probably never repeated.
Absorbing, mysterious and shocking - some people will find it unravels a great deal of their innermost tendencies and sexuality into the limelight of coherence and myth.

A classic of early fantasy, She was written in 1887, proving to be so popular that in 1908 it was made into a silent film, not once but nine times.

Set in Africa the plot revolves around the immortal She or in Arabic, Ayesha meaning "She Who Must Be Obeyed which is an honorific title and another variant, "She Who Lives". Ayesha is powerful to the point that she's down right nasty. Ayesha encounters Professor Leo Vincey who just happens to be the reincarnation of her lover she's waited 2000 years for. Leo thinks she's pretty hot but in order to become her lover he must bath in the pillar of fire. I can't say anymore or I'll give the ending away.

I had never seen the movie with Ursula Andress but remember the posters. Actually the book surprised me by delving into death, reincarnation, sexuality, fate and power in an era I thought to be rather uptight and straight laced. All in all the book is well written, easy to lose yourself into the plot and characters. The theme of the book has stood the test of time and could go head to head with any other modern fantasy book.

How long would you wait for your lover to return? Especially, after you murdered him! A fantastic tale that transcends time and space. Remarkably told by a man that began writing as a wager. A classic that needs to read and re-read.

What a book! How many movies, and scenes, and other books have been spawned from this one. Some scenes have been duplicated exactly, like the marching army of skeletons and the chasm with the leap over two projecting stones. Steven Spielberg is intimately acquainted with this novel. I'm surprised that he hasn't made it into his own film. It's a terrific read, written when Haggard was not quite 30, and it's underlying theme is death. What is it? What does man's life mean? What of religion? All kinds of unanswerable questions are pondered in the course of this thriller. And Love. No wonder it has endured. What an imagination Haggard must have possessed! There are two subsequent books where Ayesha somehow returns. It is in her character that we see the young Haggard, dreaming of the perfect woman.

"She" is the ultimate woman; intelligent, all-powerful, & knows what she wants. All men fall on their knees when they see her. Her tragic flaw comes from her blind passion of an unworthy man, the flaw of many great heroines. Holly, a fantastically tortured man, is the true hero over Leo, a good-looking but shallow young man.

With Haggard's style, this book has it all: ancient lost cities, murder, passion, revenge, women cat fights, and a good native "hot pot" scene.

The men are transformed forever from their close encounter with SHE, the queen whose "EMPIRE IS OF THE IMAGINATION." And so will the reader be!!

"She" is a good example of popular Victorian literature as influenced by the British empire. Because of this, it has some literary merit. Otherwise, the novel is fantastical garbage about two men, Holly and Leo (who is the descendant of a pharoah) from England who sail to Africa to confront Ayesha, a 2000 year old woman. That's not to say it's not a fun read. In fact, I believe a movie has been made from it, and if it was written today, it would be transformed into a cinematic extravaganza along the lines of "The Mummy," etc. It's a good adventure story. And perhaps, although I doubt Haggard was conscious of this, the novel reflects a contemporary English fear of female authority and/or foreign power. I wouldn't worry too much about that though. Enjoy "She," but just because it's a "World Classic," don't spend too much time looking for any deep meaning.