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PARTISAN REVIEW
longer his legs will carry him toward the end of his self-analysis,
but because he fears that he will reach an end that must inevita–
bly include an impotent confrontation of-even an engulfment
in-the otherness of the female, whose power is shrouded in a
darkness that lies at the heart of his own culture.
It
is significant, however, that Freud's dream broods so in–
sistently on "the chasm that had to be crossed" by means of nar–
row planks, for this frightening image derives, we should re–
member, from what is essentially the turning point of Haggard's
tale. Holly, Leo, and Job can only bridge the gulf they must
cross in order to reach the "place of Life" when, "like a great
sword of flame, a beam from the setting sun [pierces] the ... heart
of the darkness" and they are given a symbolic preview of the fate
in store for Ayesha.
It
is possible, therefore, that in his dream al–
lusion to this moment, Freud was not only enacting crucial male
anxieties but also offering himself a paradigmatically patriar–
chal hope, the hope of renewal through a reiteration of the Law
of the Father.
Interestingly, the most important fin-de-siecle work that we
can associate with
She
also pays tribute to this crucial moment.
In his
Heart of Darkness
(1899), written not long after Freud
dreamed this dream, Conrad designs for Marlow a pilgrimage
whose guides and goal are as eerily female as those Holly and
Leo must confront and conquer. Just as Leo and Holly must ritu–
ally pass through the matriarchal territory of the Amahaggar in
order to reach Her deadly land of Kar, for instance, Marlow must
pass through an antechamber ruled by two "uncanny and fate–
ful" women who are "guarding the door of Darkness." When he
reaches a key way station on his African journey, moreover, he is
"arrested" by "a small sketch in oils" done by the mysterious
Kurtz, a totemic-seeming image of "a woman, draped and blind–
folded, carrying a lighted torch." Vaguely evoking an image of
justice, the picture disturbingly suggests the contradictions be–
tween power (the torch) and powerlessness (the blindfold) and
thus it introduces the idea of the other who has been excluded
and dispossessed but who, despite such subordination, exercises
a kind of indomitable torchlike power.
Whether or not it is justified, the sense of the imminent
