Henry Rider Haggard’s Unstable Construction of Imperial Masculinity in King Solomon’s Mines (1885)

Haggard’s best-selling King Solomon’s Mines traces the adventures of three English explorers, Allan Quatermain, Sir Henry Curtis and Captain John Good in search of King Solomon’s treasure. Haggard’s Quatermain depicts his companions, and, by extension, all Westerners, as the epitome of civilization; yet, King Solomon’s Mines also hints at Victorian misgivings about British superiority and at the fear of regression to the Africans’ level. Haggard’s narration conveys that anxiety through unsettling likenesses between Europeans and Africans, both physically and behaviorally; the imperialists’ conduct becomes increasingly inseparable from African savagery. In Haggard’s romance the comforting belief in British supremacy seems vulnerable, so that the dividing line between civilization and primitivism is not only permeable but at times indiscernible.