Concept and Creation
According to Haggard's daughter Lilias, the phrase "She-who-must-be-obeyed" originated from his childhood and "the particularly hideous aspect" of one rag-doll: "This doll was something of a fetish, and Rider, as a small child, was terrified of her, a fact soon discovered by an unscrupulous nurse who made full use of it to frighten him into obedience. Why or how it came to be called She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed he could not remember". Haggard wrote that "the title She" was taken "from a certain rag doll, so named, which a nurse at Bradenham used to bring out of some dark recess in order to terrify those of my brothers and sisters who were in her charge."
In his autobiography, Haggard spoke of how he composed She within a six-week period of February and March 1886, having just completed Jess, which was published in 1887. Haggard claimed this period was an intensely creative moment: the text "was never rewritten, and the manuscript carries but few corrections". Haggard went on to declare: "The fact is that it was written at white heat, almost without rest, and that is the best way to compose." He admitted to having had no clear story in mind when he began writing:
| “ | I remember that when I sat down to the task my ideas as to its development were of the vaguest. The only clear notion that I had in my head was that of an immortal woman inspired by an immortal love. All the rest shaped itself round this figure. And it came--it came faster than my poor aching hand could set it down. | ” |
Various scholars have detected a number of analogues to She in earlier literature. According to Brantlinger, Haggard certainly read and was aware of the stories of Edward Bulwer-Lytton, in particular A Strange Story (1862) which includes a mysterious, veiled woman called "Ayesha", and The Coming Race (1871) about the discovery of a subterranean civilisation. Similarly, the name of the underground civilisation in She, known as Kôr, derives from Norse mythological romance, where the "deathbed" of the goddess Hel is called Kör and means "disease" in Old Norse. In She, a plague destroyed the original inhabitants of Kôr.
According to Haggard, he wrote the final scene of She's demise whilst waiting for his literary agent, A. P. Watt, to return to his offices. Upon completion, he entered Watt's office and threw the manuscript "...on the table with the remark: 'There is what I shall be remembered by'".
Read more about this topic: She: A History Of Adventure
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