Ayesha Unbound: The Construction of Female Power through Male Narrative in H. Rider Haggard’s She

Abstract

This study focuses on the figure of Ayesha, the immortal Queen of Henry Ridder Haggard’s She: A History of Adventure, to configure her authority as an echo of the New Woman, the proto-feminist figure of the early twentieth century. Such relation is partly
harmed, however, by the fact that she was conceived by a male author and presented through a male narrator. In that regard, the text analyses how Holly, the narrator, is torn between utter devotion and fear, leading him to vainly attempt to omit Ayesha and other female figures from the narrative. Within this tension, the present work discusses the figure of Ayesha also in relation to nineteenth-century tropes and female stock characters. As a conclusion, we will be able to see how significant is to analyse female characters from a great variety of sources, not only from women’s writings.