L’ Idole et l’enfant : une lecture de « Sambo » de W. F. Harvey (1910)

Abstract

This paper explores the parallel between the child and primitive man that underpins W. F. Harvey’s supernatural short story, a text that belongs to the category known as “imperial Gothic.” The childhood of humanity re-surfaces in a London house in the guise of an African idol which seems to exert a powerful influence on a little girl. The strange case of the child and the idol invites comparison with the colonial politics of the time and the text expresses the fear/fantasy of reverse colonization and “going native.” Though he is mainly an observer, the adult narrator may prove not to be immune to contamination by primitive forces. Indeed, his narrative seems to be contaminated by a child’s perspective and it contains traces of the voice that hegemonic authority strives to silence.