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This essay argues that imperial romance is a self-destined adventure that seeks self-justification and is ultimately self-destructive, through a comparative reading of Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim (1900) and Rider Haggard’s She (1887) in relationship to the gentlemen’s romance with “an Eastern bride” and the white queen of Africa, Ayesha respectively. Ayesha as Leo’s immortal bride may well prefigure Jim’s “Eastern bride,” personifying the “opportunity” of romantic adventure. While the “Eastern bride” leads the adventurer Jim to self-destruction in Conrad’s modern or belated romance, Ayesha’s life ends up in self-destruction, leaving Leo seeking another opportunity in Haggard’s imperial romance. In summary, despite the survival of the English adventurer, the death of his object Ayesha foreshadows the end of British imperial adventure in Central Africa, which renders Haggard’s work, like Conrad’s, resisting rather than supporting imperialism.
