Page "She: A History of Adventure" Paragraph 34

She's threat to replace Queen Victoria with herself echoes the underlying anxiety over imperialism and European colonialism emblematic of the Imperial Gothic genre.

Indeed, Judith Wilt characterises the narrative of She, in which British imperialist penetration of Africa ( represented by Holly, Leo, and Job ) suddenly suffers a potential " counter-attack " ( from Ayesha ), as one of the archetypal illustrations of the " reverse colonalism " motif in Victorian Gothic.

Similarly, She marks one of the first fictional examples to raise the spectre of the natural decline of civilisation, and by extension, British imperial power, which would become an increasingly frequent theme in Gothic and invasion literature until the onset World War I.