She: A history of adventure

Haggard, Henry Rider (1856-1925), the eighth of ten children, to Sir William Meybohm Rider Haggard, a barrister, and Ella Doveton, an author and poet, was an English writer of adventure novels set mostly in South Africa. In 1875, Haggard's father sent him to South Africa, to take up an unpaid position as assistant to the secretary to Sir Henry Bulwer, Lieutenant-Governor of the Colony of Natal. After returning to England in 1882, Haggard published a book on the political situation in South Africa and various novels before writing the work for which he is most famous, King Salomon´s Mines. She is a first-person narrative that follows the journey of Horace Holly and his ward Leo Vincey to a lost kingdom in the African interior. There, they meet a mysterious white queen, of the Amahagger people, named Ayesha, who reigns as the all-powerful "She", or "She-who-must-be-obeyed". Psychoanalytic interpretations of Haggard's novels have paid much attention to his female characters. Among his devoted reader was Carl Jung, who used the novel She (1887) as an example of anima, the feminine inner personality, as present in the unconscious of the male. It is in contrast to the animus, which represents masculine characteristics.