Female Authority And The Representation of Womanhood In H. Rider Haggard’s Ayesha
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.26750/Vol(7).No(4).Paper17Keywords:
Ayesha, She, Womanhood, Imperialists, Victorian, Society.Abstract
Haggard’s Ayesha is the continuation of the Victorian dream novel She. H. Rider Haggard's She, subtitled A History of Adventure, is figured to be among top rated books at any point distributed: it had sold exactly 83 million duplicates by 1965. Ayesha (really articulated 'Assha'), subtitled The Return of She, who takes after She in the book, is an amazing and puzzling white sovereign who administers the African Amahagger individuals. Ayesha has enchantment controls and is undying, which makes She a dream experience book.
Despite the fact that She and Ayesha were distributed almost twenty years separated, H. Rider Haggard stated that Ayesha was a decision to a two-section book, not a continuation. There is likewise a "prequel," She and Allan (1921). In the two books, an imaginary manager shows an original copy portrayal by Ludwig Horace Holly. In Haggard’s She, considering that some parts of the novel are so comfortable, readers might feel compelled into thinking that they are going through Haggard’s tour in Africa. Fortunately, in any event, when the plot eases back to a nearly gastropod pace, the way Haggard's depicts the African culture and scene conveys the reader along.
Ayesha, known as She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed, first showed up in sequential structure from 1896 to 1897 in the novel She. Ayesha is one of the marvelous, kick-ass lady characters in Victorian writing who represents the misogynist construction of femininity and embodies the femme fatale. This paper is principally concerned about the representation of feminine power and the representation of womanhood in Haggard’s Ayesha. Some questions will be investigated here. Can one consider Ayesha as a “conclusion” or a “sequel” to She since the whole novel replicates the same thematic and structural maneuvers of She? Does Haggard revive Ayesha, the “new woman”, in The Return of She respond to the threat to traditional gender roles? The findings of this study will be beneficial for the researchers, and all the undergraduate and postgraduate students of English department.
References
Coates, J.D., (2013). The Spiritual quest in rider haggard's She and Ayesha. Cahiers victoriens&édouardiens, (57).
Cook, A. R. (1993). “She”: The Veiled Reflection of the Femme Fatale’s Fire. [Online] Available at: <https://www.wcupa.edu/arts-humanities/english/documents/She-%20Allan%20Cook.pdf> [Accessed May 7, 2020]
Cristin, S. L. F. (2014). Subversive Sexuality and the Decline of British Society: The Demonization of the Victorian New Woman in Lady Audley's Secret, She, and Dracula. Thesis. [Online] Available at: <http://dspace.calstate.edu/bitstream/handle/10211.3/157432/Subversive%20Sexuality%20and%20the%20Decline%20of%20British%20Society.pdf?sequence=1> [Accessed May 11, 2020]
Godfrey, E. (Winter, 2012). Victorian Cougar: H. Rider Haggard’s She, Ageing and Sexual Selection in Marriage. Victorian Network, 4(2). [Online] Available at: <http://www.victoriannetwork.org/index.php/vn/article/viewFile/38/41> [Accessed May 15, 2020].
Gold, B.J., (1995).Embracing the corpse: discursive recycling in H. Rider Haggard's She. English literature in transition, 1880-1920, 38(3), pp.305-327.
Haggard, H.R. (1887). She: A History of Adventure (New York: Longmans, Green). [Online] Available at: <http://www.questia.com/read/127113688/she-a-history-of-adventure> [Accessed August 18, 2020]
Haggard, H.R. & Etherington, N., (1991). The Annotated She: A Critical Edition of H. Rider Haggard's Victorian Romance with Introduction and Notes. Indiana University Press.
Haggard, H.R., (1905). Ayesha: The Return of She (Vol. 1). Ward Lock.
Kelso, C. E. B. (2019). Bound by Narrative: ‘Reading’ the Female Body and Genre in Nineteenth-Century British Literature. Thesis. [Online] Available at: <https://digital.library.adelaide.edu.au/dspace/bitstream/2440/121724/1/Kelso2019_MPhil.pdf> [Accessed May 16, 2020]
Malley, S., (1997)." Time Hath No Power Against Identity": Historical Continuity and Archaeological Adventure in H. Rider Haggard's She. English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920, 40(3), pp.275-297.
McLeod, S. A. (2018, May 21). Carl Jung. Simply Psychology. [Online] Available at: <https://www.simplypsychology.org/carl-jung.htm> [Accessed June 15, 2020]
Meyrick, C. (2017). One Minute Book Review – The Secret Library by Oliver Tearle. [online] Catherine Meyrick. Available at: https://catherinemeyrick.com/2017/10/13/one-minute-book-review-the-secret-library-by-oliver-tearle/ [Accessed 11 Mar. 2020].
Nelson, D, J. (2006). Haggard's She: Burke's Sublime in a Popular Romance, Mythlore, 24(3-4). [Online] Available at: <http://www.questia.com/read/1G1-146063132/haggard-s-she-burke-s-sublime-in-a-popular-romance> [Accessed August 18, 2020]
ONeill, J. (2016). Black Gate » Articles » Vintage Treasures: The People of the Mist by H. Rider Haggard. [online] Blackgate.com. Available at: https://www.blackgate.com/2016/06/02/vintage-treasures-the-people-of-the-mist-by-h-rider-haggard/ [Accessed 11 Dec. 2019].
Pittock, M., (2018). Rider Haggard and" Heart Of Darkness". Conradiana, 19(3), pp.206-208.
Rateliff, J.D., (2016). She and Tolkien. Mythlore: A Journal of JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature, 8(2), p.3.
Reid, J.H.M. (2015). She-who-must-be-obeyed: Anthropology and Matriarchy in H. Rider Haggard's ‘She’. Journal of Victorian Culture, 20 (3). 357 - 374. ISSN 1355-5502 [Online] Available at: <http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/87264/3/Reid_Haggard_Matriarchy_final_author_version_May2015%5B1%5D.pdf> [Accessed July 18, 2020]
Rodgers, T., (1999). Restless desire: Rider Haggard, orientalism and the new woman. Women: A Cultural Review, 10(1), pp.35-46.
Sawain, W. E. (2019). The Influence of The Industrial Revolution on Nineteenth Century Literary and Artistic Movements. Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 1697. [Online] Available at: <https://egrove.olemiss.edu/etd/1697> [Accessed June 19, 2020]
Simpson, K. (2016). H. Rider Haggard, Theophilus Shepstone and the Zikali trilogy: A Revisionist Approach to Haggard’s African Fiction. [online] Edinburgh: Edinburgh Napier University. Available at: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=7&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjUpY76m63mAhXIDmMBHWEzArsQFjAGegQIBxAE&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.napier.ac.uk%2F~%2Fmedia%2Fworktribe%2Foutput-978289%2Fh-rider-haggard-theophilus-shepstone-and-the-zikali-trilogy-a-revisionist-approach-to.pdf&usg=AOvVaw0ueSqZ3_6QppXfhQgrCkG5 [Accessed 10 Apr. 2020].
Solis, J. (2019). The 10 Most Savage Things Wolverine Did To His X-Men Teammates. [online] CBR. Available at: https://www.cbr.com/savage-things-wolverine-did-x-men/ [Accessed 11 Dec. 2019].
Steere, E L. (2010, Winter). “Become a sweet and God-faring woman”: British Women in Haggard’s Early African Romances. Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies, 6(3). [Online] Available at: <https://www.ncgsjournal.com/issue63/steere.htm> [Accessed June 15, 2020]
Tabachnick, S.E., (2018). Two Tales of Gothic Adventure: She and Heart of Darkness. English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920, 56(2), pp.189-200.
Vrettos, A. (1995). Somatic Fictions: Imagining Illness in Victorian Culture (Stanford, CA: Stanford University). [Online] Available at: <http://www.questia.com/read/29324187/somatic-fictions-imagining-illness-in-victorian-culture> [Accessed June 18, 2020]
