Women: A Threat To Society in H. Ride Haggard’s The king Solomon’s Mines

H. Rider Haggard’s novel King Solomon’s Mines (1855) is a popular novel that sometimes has been read as an adventure story in which a white man, Quatermain, travels into unknown and dangerous territory and fight against dangerous natives. However, Zachary David Cady offers an alternative reading and point of view by claiming that “the novel was intended for an adolescent audience and contain numerous direct representations of Victorian masculinity”. The novel makes it clear from the beginning: It is dedicated “to all the big and little boys who read it” (Haggard: dedication page).

The story is written by men, for men or boys, and about the activities of men. It is my contention that at the time period Haggard was writing the novel, the society underwent dramatic changes since women were gaining new rights in society and that was perceived as a decrease in men’s and a threat to masculine status in a patriarchal country. Therefore, the author shows the changes in this novel by creating a world where active female empowerment represents a threat to men and undermines their masculinity.

Get quality help now

Bella Hamilton

Verified writer

Proficient in: Victorian Era

5 (234)

“ Very organized ,I enjoyed and Loved every bit of our professional interaction ”

+84 relevant experts are online

Hire writer

The main character, Allan Quatermain warns the reader that safely “there is not a petticoat in the whole history”. It is an implicit recognition that the ambit of adventure is not the proper place for women to be involved in. This story is not for the ladies but for men. Their place, as all Victorian men would agree, is in their home (a recognition of the Victorian ideas: The Angel in the House).

What is more, he is a projection of British manliness and what society was interested in. He is described as a hunter who has spent much of his own life plying his trade across the African continent and is “more accustomed to handle a rifle than a pen”. Therefore, the role of men is to be the hunters, the providers, the warriors, and the leaders. Through the combination of the qualities of the gentleman with those of the barbarian Haggard constructs this ideal of masculinity in society and that push the Victorian ideas of manliness on the young male readers that so readily devoured his work.

Although this kind of story, an adventure story, was generally focus on the male characters and their power and was dedicated for men, the female characters turn out to be the very opposite of passive. At that time, many writers stereotyped women characters as docile and passive. One such female character is for instance Helen in The Tenant of the Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë. The popular Victorian image of the ideal wife/woman came to be the “the Angel in the House”; she was expected to be devoted and submissive to her husband. The Angel was passive and powerless, charming, sympathetic, self-sacrificing, and above all pure. By using these words to describe woman, we can claim that woman does not exist on her own. However, Haggard shows in the novel that though feminine character is absent from the first half of the story, their role are very important and can be a threat to the men. The feminine can be used for both good and evil.

Two female characters appear only in the second part of the story and Allan Quatermain highlights from the beginning that “It may seem a queer thing to say, especially considering that there is no woman in it—except Foulata. Stop, though! there is Gagool, if she was a woman, and not a fiend. But she was a hundred at least, and therefore not marriageable, so I don't count her”. On the one hand, Gagool is obviously the evil side of femininity: possessor of secret knowledge unknown and used against men. She herself admits it “I have done the bidding of many kings … till in the end they did mine” (162) and in order to neutralize the threat of the female Gagool dies. On the other hand, Foulata represents the caring, kind and gentle side of femininity: she is always ready to help men, submissive and supportive to men. She is the kind of woman that society expect to be and is considered to be superior to the manipulative, secretive femininity of Gagool. This demonstrates that Haggard views the influence of the female as lethal to masculinity.

According to Rebecca Stott in “The Dark Continent: Africa as Female Body in Haggard’s Adventure Fiction”, she claims that “whilst the female presence is kept to a minimum in Haggard’s adventure fiction, the novel expresses repressed sexual anxieties of numerous kinds and anxieties about the sexuality of women”. Whilst Quatermain insists that there are no petticoats in the story, King Solomon’s Mines does have its female body. Allan Quatermain and his friends enter an unknown and hostile country where they have to penetrate into the mountains that resemble breasts and the body of a female. Thus, he describes the land as if it was a female body which was waiting to be explored. In this way, the land is identified with a woman who is not only looked at, but also penetrated by the powerful man. The irony is that the feminine body should be passive, but it turns out that is active and threatens death by trapping the heroes inside the treasure chamber. Thus, this story of the exploration and penetration of the land expresses masculine fears about female sexuality. The exploration of that foreign “body” which is both black and white expresses repressed anxieties about penetration and its effects on them and the fear women to become active and a threat to men.

To conclude, although the usual way of thinking about an adventure story was that of male characters going through difficulties along the way, King Solomon's Mines shows us how women also play an important role in a more subtle way in the novel. Although from the beginning it is affirmed that there will be no women in this story since they must have been busy with the domestic things, it shows us through two women the ideal of woman in society and their fear towards them: Foulata and Gagool. The first is 'the angel in the house', good, caring, affectionate, submissive and who knows that it belongs to man. However, the second is considered as the bad side of the woman, selfish, possessing hidden powers that men do not know and who uses them against them. It is through unknown territory that is compared to the body of a woman, that we can see that the man fears the woman who can become a threat to them.