Politics of High Colonial Romance in Haggard and Stevenson

Abstract

This research is based on R.L. Stevenson’s Treasure Island, and H. Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines and She. Among many other late Victorian writers who found the imperial situation a wonderful arena for psychological drama, Stevenson and Haggard are the two cheers in this category. The arresting narrative, rather than the scramble for colonies, accounts mostly to Haggard and Stevenson for the popular vogue for literature of exotic adventure. The objective is to show that the late Victorian adventure narratives of Stevenson and Haggard are part of a larger discourse of imperial confidence. Narratives like Treasure Island, King Solomon’s Mines and She serve to confirm and celebrate the success of the imperial undertaking. Adventurers finally find what they are looking for and return home safe and richer. The high colonial romance prominent in the adventure narratives of Stevenson and Haggard seems attributable to the consequence of the inherent motive in the part of white European travellers of Orientalizing Africa, the utilitarian Victorian motive of robbing Africa of her vast and valuable natural and manual resources, and satisfying the sexual fantasies of the masculine imperial imagination. The imperial politics, it is assumed, is inextricably linked up with the form of romance, wherein everything is focused on a conflict between the hero and his enemy, and all the readers values are intended to be bound up with the hero.