SANDRA M. GILBERT
447
clearly, like Pater's Gioconda, She has "learned the secrets of the
grave." Wherever She studied, moreover, She has strange herbal
wisdom, esoteric healing powers, and arcane alchemical knowl–
edge. She condemns men casually to death by torture and is cap–
able of "blasting" those She dislikes with a Medusan glance.
She is not merely a destroyer; because She is a combination
of Persephone and Venus, She is a destroyer
and
a preserver. Per–
haps the most peculiar feature of Haggard's discussion of Her
kingdom is his ruminative, obsessive, even at times necrophiliac
interest in the mummies that surround Her as well as the em–
balming techniques through which they have been preserved.
The Englishmen are shown a "pit about the size of the space be–
neath the dome of St. Paul's" filled with bones; they regularly
dine in a cave decorated by bas-reliefs that show it was used for
embalming as well as eating; and they are invited to a ceremon–
ial feast at which the torches are flaming human mummies as
well as the severed limbs of those mummies.
The literal as well as metaphorical piling up of all this dead
flesh reminds us, of course, that the womb of the Great Mother is
also a tomb. But such mysterious preservation of the flesh also
implies other and perhaps more uncanny points.
In
fact, the way
in which the very idea of embalming is dramatized throughout
She
suggests that, for its author, this practice paradoxically
evokes anxieties about both the ordinary world the Englishmen
represent and the extraordinary realm She rules. With their per–
petual repetition of the same character and the same message, for
instance, the mummies evoke the dullness and dread associated
with the imagined persistence of the self through history and
thus the patriarchal horror of belatedness. At the same time,
however, the practices that have preserved the mummies evoke
an alien culture-Herodotus's peculiar Egypt as well as the
strange Egypt that was being diligently studied in the nineteenth
century. More than two thousand years old, She has not only
been embalmed, She has been embalmed alive. Both destroyer
and preserver, She has been, if not destroyed, at least spectacu–
larly preserved. Significantly, however, She lacks the crucial
third ability of creation, and just as significantly, She lacks the
ultimate power of
self-preservation.
Implicit in such deficien–
cies, moreover, is the spectacular moment of Her destruction, a
sexual climax that can be defined as a sort of apocalyptic primal
scene.
