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KING SOLOMON'S MINES?: AFRICAN JEWRY, BRITISH IMPERIALISM, AND H. RIDER HAGGARD'S DIAMONDS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 August 2005

Heidi Kaufman
Heidi Kaufman
Affiliation:
University of Delaware
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Extract

IN KING SOLOMON'S MINES (1885), H. Rider Haggard describes the journey of three robust English men who successfully penetrate a sexualized landscape in southern Africa, depicted as both the body of the long-dead Queen of Sheba and that of her contemporary, King Solomon. The three English adventurers, led by the narrator Allan Quatermain, climb “Sheba's breasts” (26; ch. 2), traverse her torso, and arrive finally at the location where diamonds are stored inside her cavernous body, in the space Haggard calls “King Solomon's treasure chamber” (27; ch. 2). Narrative desire and the mystery of the Jewish patriarch's ancient empire propel these men through a series of male bonding adventures that lead to their arrival and conquest of the famed mines, where they pocket diamonds “as large as pigeon-eggs” (225; ch. 17) and plot their escape from what they fear may be a sealed cave.

Type
Research Article
Information
Victorian Literature and Culture , Volume 33 , Issue 2 , September 2005 , pp. 517 - 539
Copyright
© 2005 Cambridge University Press

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