The Set-Up
In the “Introduction” to the novel, very early on before any major character other than the narrator is introduced or even event has been added to the narrative, a simile is employed to describe the physical appearance of an unknown person. This will become the description that defines forever for the reader the figure of Leo Vincey:
“Good gracious! Why, that fellow looks like a statue of Apollo come to life.”
The Set-Up, Part II
The set-up for Leo is purely physical; it is almost impossible to not get some kind of quite specific idea of what he looks like after reading that simile. Shortly thereafter before anything of substance is provide about She, the narrator takes off on a flight of metaphorical fancy that is both beautifully written and almost entirely unhelpful in creating any tangible portrait of the character being describe except to implicate her quite fiercely as a figure of utter mystery that even the narrator can’t quite figure out.
“At first I was inclined to believe that this history of a woman on whom, clothed in the majesty of her almost endless years, the shadow of Eternity itself lay like the dark wing of Night, was some gigantic allegory of which I could not catch the meaning.”
Mythological Shorthand
Many writers engage the power of simile to draw a connection between a modern character and a well-known figure of myth as this helps to formulate in the mind of the educated reader a certain sense of the modern character without having to commit hundreds of words of prose. What is perhaps most interesting about Haggard relying on this tool is how long he waits to unveil it; the book is roughly half over before the mysterious figure described above is clarified a reader with a knowledge of ancient myth:
“I, at my age, to fall a victim to this modern Circe!”
The Ancient She
The narrator says she’s not just a modern Circe, but a modern Circe who is actually as an ancient as the myth itself. Throughout the novel, allusions are made to just how ancient a creature She actually is, but perhaps no image is quite as convincing as that provided by the imagery of a simile describing her death throes:
“She raised herself upon her bony hands, and blindly gazed around her, swaying her head slowly from side to side as a tortoise does.”
The Way Back Home
The story draws to a close with the narrator’s passage back to home and the comfort of normalcy. The metaphorical distance covered between there and home again is perfectly encapsulated in one of the story’s last metaphorical images.
“For three whole days, through stench and mire, and the all-prevailing flavour of fear”
