Henry Rider Haggard wrote Allan Quatermain as a sequel to his popular first novel, King Solomon’s Mines (1885). An instant best-seller, it appeared as a serial in Longman’s Magazine between January and August of 1887. As a young fan, Winston Churchill wrote that he preferred “A.Q.” to King Solomon’s Mines, and many readers agreed.
Allan Quatermain features the three main characters from King Solomon’s Mines, with its first-person point-of-view narrator Allan Quatermain, and compatriots, Sir Henry Curtis and Captain John Good. Readers recognized the three as stereotypes common to 19th-century quest/adventure stories. Sir Henry acts as the charming, self-courageous aristocrat who “gets the girl.” The humorous Captain Good is an egotistical, comical, and skilled naval officer. Quatermain, however, varies from the quest’s prototypical hero. He is neither young, handsome, nor dashing, and his voice of reason and emotional vulnerability, coupled with a lack of desire for fortune or fame, separate him from the norm. A two-year-old diary entry begins the novel, revealing his grief over his son’s death. That loss underlies a sense of regret over a changing world in which society values material goods above human lives.
A veteran Africa traveler, he considers similarities between the “civilized” English and the “uncivilized” Zulu natives, concluding, “civilization is only savagery silver-gilt.” England cannot satisfy his longings, with its class structure, no longer focused on traditional ideals. When Curtis and Good agree to accompany him to South Africa, Quatermain seeks the wealth of self-understanding and self-acceptance. The group’s goal is to determine the truth behind the legend of darkest Africa’s hidden “great white race.”
As the action rises, the trio and their servants meet a Zulu warrior from their past, Umslopogaas, who wields with deadly accuracy a battle-axe named Inkosi-Kaas (Chieftainess). He greets Quatermain using the Englishman’s Zulu name, Macumazahn, or “he who keeps a bright look-out at night.” Umslopogaas joins the group, which first visits a missionary outpost, based on a real-life station Haggard visited run by a Dr. Merensky. After proving themselves in battle against renegade natives to rescue the missionary’s kidnapped daughter, the band moves on, encouraged by the missionary’s tale of a visitor who claimed to have seen the lost civilization. Their entourage adds Alphonse, a clownish sidekick who introduces every possible Frenchman stereotype, including that of chef.
The four major characters and Alphonse discover their goal, “The Frowning City,” only after surviving adventures that claim all the servants. A trip along a subterranean river suggests the traditional quest character’s descent into Hades, including the adventurers’ exposure to a pillar of fire. Produced by a volcano, the pillar offers stunning imagery and prototypical man-versus-environment conflict. The symbolism of water as a vehicle of rebirth signals the arrival of never-before-experienced situations in the characters’ new lives as they emerge from the cavern.
Like all quest characters, this band faces many obstacles, some in the form of “monsters.” The monsters include an impressively drawn group of giant foaming-at-the-mouth crabs that grimly suggest Charles DARWIN’s theory of survival of the fittest, a topic of interest to Victorian readers. That suggestion would interest New Historicism critics, as would the fear of the lost city’s priests that foreigners might introduce a new religion to displace their sun worship. When the high priest questions Quatermain about religion, he almost swoons when Quatermain replies that his culture follows at least 95 different religions. Formalism critics would note the use of traditional literary symbols, such as the color white to represent purity and gold to note value or worth.
The adventure genre demands its heroes encounter and conquer beautiful women, fulfilled by the twin queens of the Zu-Vendi dynasty. The contrast between the twins, who first appear with right shoulders and breasts bared, would interest Feminist Critics. Queen Nyleptha, of “dazzling fairness,” has a “sweet” smile and a “crown” of golden curls, with a mouth predictably “curved like Cupid’s bow.” Her sister and obvious foil, Sorais, has wavy black hair, darker skin, dark lustrous eyes, and a mouth that seems “cruel” to the observant Quatermain, suggesting the doppelgänger—an evil twin, from the German term that translates as “double walker.” Victorian readers recognized similarities between Haggard’s queens and females of fairy and folktales, where golden hair predicts goodness and passivity, characteristics preferable to those of the dark female, who typically embodies intelligence and activity, often challenging the gender role of the male hero.
As the two queens battle, it is not over political or social disagreements, but rather disagreements of the heart; both desire Sir Henry, again suggesting tales in which two females battle for power or romance. Haggard’s comments, through Quatermain, on the nature of women, delivered at times with a narrative wink, include reflection on the fact that “if ladies have a will,” they will generally get their way; that they are, by nature “loquacious”; that women are weak and most often “actresses,” not to be trusted. Haggard also questions traditional thought in a neat gender reversal when Nyleptha first accuses Quatermain of spinning “spiders’ webs of words,” and then remarks, “the poet has said that man is like a snake.” Of additional interest are multiple uses of the traditional symbolic imagery of woman as a bird in a cage and Nyleptha’s identification with the moon, while the civilization’s male priests identify with the sun.
In a vicious battle, Nyleptha defeats her sister, or, more correctly, her forces, led not by herself but by the English visitors and Umslopogaas. By contrast, the more active Sorais, nicknamed “Queen of the Night,” leads her own forces, but her defeat by her sister’s male-led forces returns gender roles to their norm. When Sorais commits suicide by thrusting what amounts to a silver stake through her heart, Nyleptha reigns with her king consort, Sir Henry. Sir Henry assumes much of the actual duties of royalty, making major decisions about the culture’s future. However, contrary to what readers raised to believe in the benefits of Imperialism expect, he refuses to force “civilized” activities from his own culture into that of the Zu-Vendis. Perhaps echoing Haggard’s own doubts, Sir Henry expounds upon the fact that the “generous hearted” people of Zu-Vendi should continue to enjoy the “blessings” of their barbarism. He intends to save the culture being destroyed by tourists, politicians, and teachers who will bring “greed, drunkenness, new diseases, gunpowder, and general demoralization.” In the end, Alphonse alone returns to the outside world to deliver Quatermain’s account of all their adventures.
A superb example of the African adventure story, Allan Quatermain appealed to Victorian cultural sensibilities as much as to the desire for entertainment. In addition to offering thoughtful commentary on the pros and cons of imperialism, it also deals with class structure and questions of race, psychology, sexuality, and evolution, topics that greatly interested Victorians. The novel may be Haggard’s comment on the threat to the British Empire that he saw everywhere evident, from the dissolution of the landed aristocracy to the threat against Christianity in Charles DARWIN’s 1859 On the Origin of Species.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Butts, Dennis. Introduction to Allan Quatermain, by Henry Rider Haggard. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.
Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. 1949. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1968.
Haggard, H. Rider. Allan Quatermain. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.
Categories: British Literature, Literature, Novel Analysis
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