The Sheik (Romance)

the Sheik (original title: The Sheik ) is a Love story written by the British writer Edith Maude Hull. Appeared in 1919 with the the United Kingdom, it obtains an enormous success and is recognized like one of the precursors of the modern love story. It is the subject of a film adaptation later two years with Rudolph Valentino in the title role.

Summary

In the Algerian city Biskra, the beautiful one and icy Lady Diana Mayo faces conventions while refusing to marry to preserve its independence and while wanting to traverse the Désert. However, it attracts the covetousness of the Sheik Ahmed Ben Hassan which removes it and the guard captive in its tent in full medium of the desert. Relentless and dominator, the Sheik is binding on the young woman. In spite of her supplications and her escape bid, Diana is not able to release herself and in spite of it, feels more and more attracted by its kidnapper.

Context

During the First World War, her husband having left to fight, Edith Maude Winstanley starts to write a novel without thinking of a possible publication but in the hope to fill its loneliness. After finishhaving finished it, satisfied with its work, it decides to take a pseudonym E. Mr. Hull and to address its manuscript to a British editor. This one is allured by the history and agrees to publish it.

It is not the first time that the desert is used as decoration in a sentimental novel or adventures. Robert Hitchens with The Garden off Allah (1904) and The Cal off the blood (1906) and Kathlyn Rhodos with The will off Allah (1908) and The Desert Lovers (1922) previously explored the “mystical properties of the desert”. However, these novels are still rather wise and do not place, like does it the novel of Hull, the desert on the chart as being a good place for the sex.

At the time of the writing of the novel, the figure of the English Sheik , English who disguises itself with floating clothing of an Arab chief is already popular and present in British imagination. Thus, the realizer Thomas Lowell grants a big part to the adventures of Thomas Edward Lawrence alias Lawrence of Arabia in a documentary film devoted to the First World War and left in 1919.

The characters speak in French because at the time of the novel, the Algérie was a French colony: “Without reflecting, she had addressed herself to him of French. And he had answered him in the same language. ”. In spite of that, it becomes a Best-seller in the Twenties and is always published. It was sold to 1,2 million specimens throughout the world

* Diana Mayo : ( Why did you bring me here? ) (...)

* the Sheik : ( Why did I bring you here? Good god! Aren't you enough woman for you to doubt it? ), brown hands etc As soon as the truth is revealed, the Sheik leaves his Eastern costume and revêt typically English clothing of which riding breeches and tweed jacket.

The women not-bride were not to have sexual relationships. Removal and the rape, follow-ups of the history of love, make it possible to circumvent this rule without heroin losing its morality. However, criticisms reproach the novel for evoking the desires of heroin. Indeed, as from the moment when Diana understands that it fell in love with the Sheik, it awaits their pressures impatiently and acknowledges itself tapped by the pivot of the flesh . Thanks to the Sheik, heroin thus takes truly conscience that it is a woman and not a real tomboy who does not include/understand the interest to embrace.

With the evolution of mentalities, the novel must from now on face new criticisms. The feminists reproach him for being sadomasochistic since not only heroin falls in love with its rapist, but throughout the novel it terrifies it. Of intrepid and independent at the beginning of the history, it loses any courage as of its confrontation with the Sheik:

( This feeling had initially intrigued it. But now that it felt it to go up in it, (...), it discovered what it acted: it was the fear. )

As from this moment, the young woman is devoured by the anguish and despair, while noticing the beauty of her kidnapper. However, according to these same criticisms, the novel implies that heroin becomes truly female only when it is subjected to the orders of the Sheik. Indeed, the first time where it agrees to obey to him, it is the fear and not the love which guides its gesture. As if the nature rebels of which it made proof before its meeting with the Sheik could not last and with a woman in love was not compatible and which only a strong and pitiless man could give it in the right way .

The Sheik: the anti-hero of a love story

The Sheik is included in the category of the dark heroes of the love stories. Its virility is presented in an undeniable way and its sensuality is palpable. All in him is hard, angular and dark. The words and the sentences relating to it are continuously repeated: “relentless”, steel pressure, power, muscular body etc It is described much more than is to it heroin. In the imaginary one of the readers and authors of the time, English does not represent the ideal lover because it is retained too much (from where success with the cinema of Latin lovers like Rudolph Valentino and Ramon Novarro). The Sheik in particular represents an icon or a metaphor for the East. It is about a true male . Before even seeing it, Diana is intrigued and charmed: major and sensual male-intonated voice . Its voluptuous accents were delayed on the words, wrapped them of a heat cherishes , an insurance which it was far from testing ) and there still must face a categorical refusal.

Influence

The American author of love stories Jayne Ann Krentz declares ( It is the first love story which I read and it changed my life ). In 1980, the editions I have Lu publishes the novel in the form of Livre of pocket in the collection the preferred novels of Barbara Cartland .

the Sheik is regarded as the novel of origin of a new literary sub-genus: confabulated of the desert ( Serves lovesong in English). This type of novel always takes again the same screen, removal of an independent heroin and with the sturdy character by authoritative Arabic with wild beauty . The tents, the desert and the oases form integral part of the accounts. The most known novels are the prisoner of the Sahara (1988) of Penelope Neri and promised in marriage captive the (1977) of Johanna Lindsey.

Continuation

In 1925, Edith Maude Hull makes appear the continuation of its novel: the son of the Sheik (original title: The Sounds off the Sheik ). The history occurs twenty years later, Diana and the Sheik are married and have two wire Ahmed and Caryll. Those will clash for the same woman. He is the subject also of a film adaptation, the son of the Sheik , with always Rudolph Valentino which plays the part of the Sheik and like that of one of wire.

Quotations

Diana Mayo : ( Why did you do that? ) (...)
the Sheik : ( Because I wanted you. Because one day with Biskra, four weeks ago, I saw you a few moments, long enough to know that I wanted you. And what I want, I take it. )

Notes and references of the article

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