A Heroine’s Great Fear
Those Black Harems to the North
by Alan Hanson
In Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar,
Jane Clayton found herself a captive of the Arab raider, Achmet Zek, who
planned to exact a ransom from her husband, Lord Greystoke. Jane, however,
was horrified by the possibility of another fate at the hands of the evil
Arab.
“She had heard of many women,
among whom were white women, who had been sold by outlaws such as Achmet
Zek into the slavery of black harems.”
This shadowy and horrifying threat
of a heroine being delivered into the clutches of a black sultan became
a recurring image in Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan stories. Actually, it
was outside of the Tarzan series that Burroughs first raised this image
of ultimate heroine doom. In The Lad and the Lion, written
in 1914, the beautiful young Arab girl Nakhla was captured by the Arab
marauder Sidi-El-Seghir, who, it was said, planned to sell her into “the
harem of some brutal black sultan of the far south.”
Over the next 26 years, Burroughs
continued to conjure up and play with this dreaded fate for white women
in Central Africa. In 12 different Tarzan stories, a total of 15 white
heroines found themselves captured and destined for the harems of Muslim
potentates. All but one of them were saved before falling into the clutches
of a brutish sultan.
The Image
On the surface, the situation was
always a simple one. A band of villains, usually Arabs, abducted a lovely
young and virtuous white woman somewhere within the borders of Tarzan’s
domain. A trek north began with the fair captive well aware of her captors’
intention to sell her into the harem of some cruel black sultan. Originally,
the Arab leader might have considered ransom or satisfying his own dark
lust, but eventually the fortune to be made by selling an especially beautiful
white woman overcame other thoughts and the band headed north.
What made this particular fate considerably
more dangerous than other troublesome situations that Burroughs used with
his female characters was its feeling of finality. If the captive women
were completely removed from Tarzan’s country, there would be no hope of
rescue. A heroine abducted and stashed in some native village or carried
off to some lost city was certainly in danger, but at least she was within
Tarzan’s realm, and he could be counted on eventually to find and rescue
her. Should, however, the fair captive be carried out of Tarzan’s country,
the feeling was that she would disappear forever in that shadowy Muslim
world where neither Tarzan nor any civilized force exercised influence.
When Sheik Ibn Aswad was fleeing north with the captured Victoria Custer
in The Eternal Lover, Burroughs wrote that they “disappeared
from the sight of men at the border of the savage land of the Waziri nor
was there any other than her captors to know the devious route that they
followed to gain the country north of Uziri.” In such situations, therefore,
it was crucial that the ape-man, or some other hero, act quickly to save
the lady while she was still within the boundaries of Tarzan’s country.
The possibility of being sold into
a harem in the north, then, was the worst fate a Burroughs heroine could
face. If carried out, it was a fate that was final, devoid of hope for
rescue. Ahead would be years of sexual degradation at the hands of a particularly
repulsive man of the black race. The image is not particularly appealing
now, but in the times Burroughs was writing, it truly must have been considered,
by both the women and the men who loved them, a “fate worse than death.”
The Traders in
Flesh
Certainly, the black sultans who
were the destined owners of these white women were painted as disgusting
figures, but they were not so evil in Burroughs’ eyes as the men who marketed
in white women. These traders in human flesh were usually, but not always,
Arabs. Certainly, Burroughs did not present a balanced view of Arabs. His
stories created a decidedly negative image of these people and their Islamic
beliefs. In fairness to Burroughs, he did make it clear that those desert
dwellers who invaded Tarzan’s country and stole white women were not typical
Arabs. In The Lad and the Lion, he described these raiders
as, “the lawless, vicious marauders of the desert — outlawed murderers
and criminals.”
These criminal invaders raided south
of their own country to murder and take by force whatever treasure they
could find. Then they fled back to the desert country to sell their plunder.
If a white woman were among the take, so much the better, for in the slave
trade of the time, a beautiful white woman, both rare and desirable, commanded
a high price. Among these Arab marauders was Achmet Zek, a notorious cutthroat
and hater of all Europeans. He burned Tarzan’s home and kidnapped his wife.
There was Ibn Aswad, who sought to settle an old score with Tarzan by abducting
his beautiful houseguest from Nebraska. Ibn Jad came south to find a fabled
lost treasure city and wound up carrying away an even greater treasure,
the city’s princess. A lust for gold and a hatred of all Christians motivated
Abu Batn. He joined his band with a communist safari to get a share of
Oparian gold and eventually plotted to capture and sell two white women
in the north. Atewy, “a swarthy man with evil eyes,” engineered
the abduction of two Hollywood actresses in Tarzan and the Lion Man.
All were motivated by greed and recognized the exceptional value of a beautiful,
fair-skinned woman in the Arab slave trade.
As mentioned, in the Tarzan stories,
traders in white women were not always Arabs. Occasionally, natives abducted
a woman with the intention of selling her into slavery. For instance, in
Tarzan
the Untamed, Usanga, a sergeant in a German native regiment, got
his hands on Bertha Kircher and considered selling her to some black sultan.
Also, Luvini, a native in Flora Hawkes’ safari in Tarzan and the
Golden Lion, plotted to take Flora prisoner and sell her in the
north. Presumably, when a villainous native had a white woman for sale,
he would sell her to an Arab band, which would then carry the goods north
to market.
The Goods
The Arab bands of marauders who
invaded Tarzan’s country were not simply looking for beautiful white women
to abduct. In fact, most of their profits came from abducting men, mostly
natives, and selling them as slaves in the Arab territories. When Aziz,
the protagonist of The Lad and the Lion, was captured by
Arab outlaws, their leader had plans for him, according to Burroughs. “Sidi-El-Seghir
preferred to spare the prisoner’s life for a while. Perchance he anticipated
a price for so powerfully built a slave at the court of a lazy black sultan.”
Lovely white women, then, were not
the backbone of the slave trade. In fact, it was not often that one fell
into the clutches of Arab raiders. Because such goods were rare, however,
they commanded the highest prices at the marketplace. And while Burroughs
rarely threatened his heroes with being sold into slavery, he often placed
his white heroines in such peril.
Jane Clayton was the first white
woman in the Tarzan stories to be captured by Arab slavers. While her husband
was away gathering gold in Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar,
Achmet Zek’s cutthroats swooped down upon the Greystoke bungalow, killed
the Waziri guards, and carried Jane away. His original intention was to
collect a ransom from Tarzan, but he had to give up that plan. “It is
the only way, now,” he concluded. “She should bring a good price.”
Jane was not the only American woman
destined for slavery in the north. Rhonda Terry and Naomi Madison were
two actresses who came to Central Africa with an American motion picture
company in Tarzan and the Lion Man. One night the Arab band
hired to accompany the safari abducted Rhonda and Naomi. Atewy, one of
the Arab lieutenants, remarked, “These girls are not ill-favored. They
will bring money at several places of which I know.” When Victoria
Custer left Nebraska in The Eternal Lover to visit Lord Greystoke
in Africa, she never could have imagined that she might be sold into slavery.
But the devious Sheik Ibn Aswad captured her. The vengeful Arab recalled
an incident in the past when the Englishman had dealt harshly with the
ivory and slave caravan of a fellow Arab raider. He laughed when Victoria
promised him a healthy ransom from her friends.
“You will bring a good price
at the court of the sultan of Fulad, north of Tagwara, and for the rest
I shall have partly settled the score which I have against the Englishman.”
Several European women also found
themselves destined for the sex slave block. As mentioned earlier, Bertha
Kircher (actually Patricia Canby, a British spy) was taken captive by the
native Usanga in Tarzan the Untamed. Bertha later explained,
“He and his men were all attached to a German native regiment. They
brought me along with them when they deserted, either with the intention
of holding me for ransom or selling me into the harem of one of the black
sultans of the north.” Bertha’s fellow Englishwoman, Flora Hawkes,
organized a safari to raid the treasure vaults of Opar in Tarzan
and the Golden Lion. She would have been bound for a Muslim harem
had not a native girl warned her of the headman’s plot.
“Luvini, after the Arabs are
killed, has given orders that the black boys kill all the white men and
take you prisoner. He intends either to keep you for himself or to sell
you in the north for a great sum of money.”
Lady Barbara Collis was yet another
Englishwoman who Arab marauders tried to abduct. Near the end of Tarzan
Triumphant, a shifta band planned to raid Lord Passmore’s camp
and carry away Lady Barbara. (That Lord Passmore was actually Tarzan explains
why the plot failed.) Magra, the dark, exotic vamp in Tarzan and
the Forbidden City, was only half English (her mother was the daughter
of an Indian maharaja), but she, too, was the victim of a plot when the
natives of her safari bound for the lost city of Ashair rebelled. In the
same story, Helen Gregory was kidnapped by the evil Easterner, Atan Thome.
He took her to barter with her father, but if that didn’t work, he was
prepared to dispose of her for profit.
“If he doesn’t bring the map,
he’ll never see you again. I’m leaving for the interior immediately, and
I shall take you with me. There are sultans there who will pay a good price
for you.”
One Russian girl nearly made the
trip north to harem country. In Tarzan the Invincible, Zora
Drinov was part of Peter Zveri’s safari to steal gold from Opar and incite
a communist upheaval in Africa. Abu Batn, whose Arab band accompanied the
safari, had an eye for Zora. “I have looked upon the woman, and I find
her good. I know a city where she would bring many pieces of gold.”
After he abducted her, she asked
him, “You mean that you are going to sell me to some black sultan?”
He responded, “I would not put it that way. Rather let us say that I
am making a present to a great and good friend and saving you from certain
death in the jungle should we depart without you.”
It was not only American and European
white women, however, who were in danger of being abducted and sold as
slaves. As everyone knows, in Tarzan’s Africa there were a number of lost
cities filled with people of distant European ancestry. Arab slave raiders
also coveted the women of these indigenous white races. Foremost among
them, of course, was La of Opar. In Tarzan the Invincible,
the outlaw Abu Batn fairly trembled at the sight of La. “This new one
will bring such as has never been paid before,” he predicted. “Her taming
we may leave to him who will pay many pieces of gold for her.”
Other lost civilization women who
fell into the hands of Arab raiders included Jezebel, a golden-haired beauty
of the tribe of Abraham in Tarzan Triumphant. The same shifta
band that was after Lady Barbara Collis planned to abduct Jezebel at the
same time. Then there was Guinalda, the treasured princess of the treasure
city of Nimmr in Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle. Her beauty made the
lust for gold well up in the evil heart of Ibn Jad.
“Yes, a woman of such wondrous
beauty that in the north she alone would bring a price that would make
Ibn Jad rich beyond dreams. I shall hasten from the valley with this rich
treasure that we now have, not the least of which is the woman. Billah!
In the north she will fetch the ransom of a dozen sheykh.”
And finally, there was Gonfala,
queen of the diamond cult of Kaji. She was never actually abducted, but
the thought of doing so did cross the mind of a native chief, whose village
Gonfala and her companions passed through in Tarzan the Magnificent.
“He had been thinking about her.
He was also thinking of a black sultan to the east to whom she might be
sold, but he put this thought from him. He did not wish any trouble with
the white men.”
Here they are, then, the 15 white
female characters that Burroughs put in varying degrees of peril of being
abducted and sold into the harems of black sultans — Nakhla, Victoria Custer,
Jane Clayton, Bertha Kircher, Flora Hawkes, Guinalda, Zora Drinov, La,
Lady Barbara Collis, Jezebel, Rhonda Terry, Naomi Madison, Helen Gregory,
Magra, and Gonfala. Oh yes, there was one more, the one who actually did
experience life in the harem of a black sultan. More on her later.
The Black Sultans
Just who were these black sultans,
these ominous creatures whose very name struck fear into the hearts of
white women and the men who loved them? For starters, sultan is a title
of honor given to Muslim rulers and princes. It was first used in the Islamic
world around 900 A.D. Islam came to Africa following the death of the prophet
Muhammad in 632 A.D., when Muslims began spreading their religion across
the whole of northern Africa through a series of jihads, or holy wars.
Originally, the title of sultan
was given to men who were stern and mighty and ruled large areas. For instance,
the ruler of old Turkey was the greatest sultan of all. In fact, if any
of Burroughs’ white heroines had been sold in the slave markets of the
north, there was a chance they would have wound up in Turkey. When Jane
Clayton was contemplating her own fate as an Arab captive in Tarzan
and the Jewels of Opar, she remembered hearing not only that some
white women were sold into African black harems, but also that a few others
were “taken farther north into the almost equally hideous existence
of some Turkish seraglio.”
The original Seraglio was the ancient
home of the Turkish sultan in Constantinople. The palace, isolated by its
location on a narrow strip of land sticking out into the sea, was surrounded
by walls that enclosed public buildings, temples, and the quarters of the
sultan’s harem. In the above passage, Burroughs used seraglio as a common
noun, probably referring to the palaces of lesser sultans who maintained
harems in early 20th century Turkey. No doubt, only an exceptionally beautiful
white woman captured in Sub-Saharan Africa would have bypassed the harems
of North Africa to be sold into a Turkish harem. Of all the Burroughs women
who faced being sold into slavery, perhaps La would have been most worthy
of such an “honor.”
It was in Africa, though, where
most all white women abducted in Tarzan’s country would have been placed
in harems. In Burroughs’ stories, these black sultans were usually nebulous
figures without names or substance, but in one instance Burroughs threatened
to send Jane Clayton into the harem of a real world leader. In Tarzan
and the Jewels of Opar, Abdul Mourak commanded a detachment of
Abyssinian soldiers sent south to punish Achmet Zek’s Arab raiders. When
he failed in that mission, he sought some way to appease his master.
“He looked for degradation and
possible death in punishment for his failures and his misfortunes when
he should have returned to his native land and made his report to Menelek;
but an acceptable gift might temper the wrath of the emperor, and surely
this fair flower of another race should be gratefully received by the black
ruler.”
Menelek, the father of modern Ethiopia,
became the emperor of what Burroughs called Abyssinia in 1889. His army
had earlier defeated the Italians at the battle of Aduwa. So, free of any
European power to object, he clearly could have kept white women in his
palace. If Menelek did maintain a collection of women, however, it could
not properly have been called a harem, per se, since he was a Christian,
not a Muslim. (Incidentally, Menelek died in 1913, two years before Burroughs
wrote Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar. Therefore, either Burroughs
was not paying close enough attention to current events at the time or
he intended that this story take place prior to Menelek’s death.)
However, when Burroughs was writing
in the early part of the 20th century, there were many wealthy sultans
who lacked the territorial power of a prince or ruler, such as Menelek.
Thus, when Burroughs mentioned black sultans, he was probably referring
to Muslims who had accumulated vast fortunes in some manner and whose wealth
had allowed them to gain control over some small area of Northern Africa’s
vast interior. Only once did Burroughs give a name to one of these minor
sultans. In The Eternal Lover, Sheik Ibn Aswad told Victoria
Custer, “You will bring a good price at the court of the sultan of Fulad,
north of Tagwara.” Other than that, Burroughs left his black sultans
nameless, ominous figures who lived only the fears of the white women bound
for their harems. However, Burroughs did occasionally provide some clues
about where they lived.
First, he made it clear many times
that most of these sultans lived north of Tarzan’s country. Lord Greystoke’s
East Africa estate was located in the area that is today western Kenya.
From there, the country in which he exercised control stretched west into
the interior and an uncertain distance both north and south. To the north,
which is the main area of concern here, Tarzan’s hegemony could not have
extended far, if at all, into present day Ethiopia. When Tarzan visited
Abyssinia in Tarzan and the City of Gold, the author noted
that the ape-man was “far from his own stamping grounds.” Therefore,
the northern border of Tarzan’s country, and thus the southern border of
the land of black sultans, probably ran along the southern border of present
day Ethiopia and the northern borders of Kenya, Uganda, and The Central
Africa Republic.
The eastern border of the land black
sultans controlled was probably deep in the interior to the west of Abyssinia.
It stands to reason that a sultan bold enough to keep white women in his
harem probably lived beyond the reach of European control. In the early
decades of the twentieth century, such a place would surely have been in
the interior, far from the African coastline.
Burroughs’ first use of the black
sultan image in The Lad and the Lion helps to establish the
northern border of their country. Nakhla, as stated earlier, faced a “horrid
fate that would end in the harem of some brutal black sultan of the far
south.” Nakhla’s people ranged the vast Sahara Desert of northern Africa.
It appears, then, that the black sultans in question could be found south
of Arab country, on the southern fringe of the great Sahara. Supporting
this conclusion is the obvious fact that Burroughs’ sultans were black,
whereas the Arab tribes of the Sahara are generally Caucasian. The sultans,
then, must have resided in that band running east and west through lower
northern Africa where the Sahara Desert blends into tropical black Africa.
In was in this area that the early Muslims sought to expand their religion
with moderate success. It took hold among some black Africans, but could
not shake the animistic beliefs of others. It is in this area, then, that
Burroughs’ black sultans probably lived. On today’s map, it would include
the southern parts of the countries of Sudan, Chad, Niger, and even as
far west as Mali. In fact, Mali is the key to explain how those white women
captured in Tarzan’s country would have been transported to market, and
from there into harems.
It is known that some white women
captured in the south were delivered directly into the harem of a particular
black sultan to the north. As noted earlier, in Tarzan the Invincible,
Abu Batn intended to present Zora Drinov to a “great and good friend,”
and Victoria Custer was bound directly for the harem of the sultan of Fulad.
However, most of the Arab marauders who abducted white women in Tarzan’s
country desired the greatest return possible for their goods. That meant
selling to the highest bidder among the agents of several sultans.
Of course, capturing the women and
getting them to market were the most important steps in the Arab slave
trade. Once they had abducted a white woman, the first order of business
was to get her out of Tarzan’s country. Seldom did an Arab band dally before
heading for the border once it had in hand so valuable a commodity. In
The
Son of Tarzan, Burroughs noted that once out of the land of the
Uziri the Arab raiders moved “northward along the trail that connects
with the great caravan routes entering the Sahara from the south.”
After reaching the caravan routes, the Arabs had a choice of places to
go to market their captive woman and other goods. When Atewy was plotting
to abduct Naomi Madison and Rhonda Terry in Tarzan and the Lion Man,
he told an accomplice, “They will bring money at several places of which
I know.” In Tarzan the Invincible, Abu Batn, referring
to Zora Drinov, said, “I know a city where she would bring many pieces
of gold.” It was in certain cities on the fringe of the Sahara, then,
that the Arab slave traders, like Abu Batn, usually took their white women
to be sold discreetly to the highest bidder.
In The Son of Tarzan,
Burroughs mentioned the greatest of these cities where Arab outlaws could
sell their stolen goods. After trading and raiding in Tarzan’s country
for a time, Arab marauders “collected their cargoes which their ships
of the desert bore northward twice each year to the market at Timbuktu.”
Today Timbuktu is a small trading
town in central Mali, but from the 13th to the 16th centuries it was one
of the richest Muslim trading centers in Africa. Its location on the edge
of the Sahara Desert made it the perfect place for exchanging goods from
the desert north and those from the grasslands and forests to the south.
Caravans from West and Central Africa brought gold, ivory, and slaves to
Timbuktu, whose merchants traded them for the salt, cloth, copper, dates,
and figs brought in by camel caravans from the Arab north. No doubt, many
sultans, both black and white, came to Timbuktu to purchase male slaves
and women for their harems.
Beginning in the 17th century, however,
Timbuktu began to decline in population and importance as a trading center.
The whole of Mali, including Timbuktu, came under the colonial control
of the French beginning in 1893, and remained so during the entirety of
Burroughs’ writing career. Burroughs wrote The Son of Tarzan
in 1915, and his portrayal of Timbuktu even then as a key trading center
for Arabs raiders perpetuated the romantic image of a city whose real importance
had disappeared over a century earlier. Be that as it may, Burroughs’ mention
of Timbuktu reinforces the idea that the white women stolen in Tarzan’s
country were taken by their captors to various cities located across the
southern edge of the Sahara Desert. There they were sold and disappeared
forever behind the secluded harem walls of the highest bidders.
Life in a Harem
Each and every Burroughs heroine
who faced the possibility of being sold in the north imagined a most horrid
fate awaiting her there. Foremost in the lady’s imagination was the fear
of sexual violation, although Burroughs seldom mentioned it openly. In
Tarzan
and the Jewels of Opar, Mohammed Beyd sought to win Jane for himself
by playing on her fears. “Do you know where this man would take you?”
he asked her. “And you are willing to become the plaything of a black
sultan?”
This would be no simple rape. A
woman actually sold into one of these harems would be subject to years
of sexual abuse. But what made Jane, and the other white women who faced
this fate, feel such terror was the element of race. These white women
would be the sexual playthings of black sultans. Nearly every time Burroughs
conjured up this image he made sure the reader knew his white heroine would
be sold into the embraces of a black man. And if that weren’t enough, Burroughs
painted these black sultans in particularly disgusting terms. He called
them “brutal,” and in Tarzan and the Lion Man, when
Rhonda Terry imagined her fate, she said, “I’m thinking of some fat,
greasy, black sultan.”
How would the horrid imaginings
of Rhonda Terry and the other captive white women compare to the reality
of being trapped in the harem of a black sultan? For most of his writing
career, Burroughs declined to answer that question. He portrayed this fate
as being so horrible that he never allowed one of his heroines to actually
fall into the clutches of a cruel sultan. They all were saved from that
fate by either escaping on their own or being rescued by Tarzan. They all
escaped — at least until Sandra Pickerall came along.
In Tarzan and the Madman,
first published in 1964, Edgar Rice Burroughs for the first time allowed
a white woman to enter the harem of a black sultan, and finally the reader
was able to judge if the desperate fears of Burroughs’ heroines over the
years were well founded. Sandra Pickerall was a Scottish girl who came
to Africa on a safari with her father. She was abducted, and while being
led northward deep into the mountains of Abyssinia, she imagined what awaited
her.
“She expected to be taken to
some squalid, native village, ruled over probably by a black sultan, where
she would be reviled and mistreated by perhaps a score of wives and concubines.”
Sure enough, her fears were realized.
She was captured by a horde of black warriors wearing war paint and feathers
and carrying spears. When Tarzan saw them, he classified them as Gallas,
which they were, but living as far north as they did, in the foothills
of an Abyssinian mountain range, they had been converted to Islam. Their
leader, Ali, was a sultan, not a chief.
When Sandra was led into the Muslim
village, it was obvious that the sultan had no palace to house his harem.
“The village was a hodge-podge
of grass huts, houses of sod or clay, and several constructed of native
rocks. The largest of these stood in the center of the village at one side
of a large plaza.”
This large house made of rock was
the palace of the sultan, Ali. When Sandra was brought before him, Burroughs’
readers, at long last, got their first look at a black sultan in the flesh.
“ Presently a huge negro emerged
from the interior with warriors marching on either side and before and
behind him, a slave carrying an umbrella above his head, while another
brushed flies from him with a bunch of feathers fastened to the end of
a stick. The fat man was the sultan, Ali. He seated himself upon a stool,
and his court gathered about and behind him.”
After the sight of Ali heightened
her fears of what was to come, a desperate Sandra sought some way of freeing
herself from her captor. First, she promised her father would pay a ransom
of gold. Ali laughed. “I have more gold than I know what to do with,”
he said. Then Sandra threatened him with retribution if he harmed her.
“My people are rich and powerful,” she warned. “There are many
of them. Some day they will come and punish you, if you do not let us go.”
Ali’s response showed the attitude
that must have been shared by most black sultans at that time. Because
he lived in the remote interior, he felt he was beyond the reach of European
military power. “We do not fear the white man,” he declared. “They
fear us. When they come, we make slaves of them. Have they ever sent soldiers
against us? No.”
Directing that she not be harmed,
Ali then turned Sandra over to the women of his harem, who, according to
Burroughs, “would have treated Sandra with every indignity and cruelty
had they not feared Ali.” It wasn’t long before Sandra learned the
official status she was to have in Ali’s harem.
“An old hag entered the hut snarling
through yellow fangs, cursing and raging as she spread what was now common
gossip in the village. Ali had proclaimed the white prisoner his new wife
and had set the day for the marriage rites. The marriage was to be celebrated
with a feast and orgy of drinking the following day and consummated at
night. In the village, preparations for the celebration were under way.
Food and beer were being prepared; and the terrified bride was being instructed
as to her part in the rites.”
It was one thing for Burroughs to
bring a heroine to the brink of such a union, but, of course, he could
not allow the consummation of this marriage. Tarzan engineered an attack
on the Muslim village that saved Sandra. Still, in throwing Sandra Pickerall,
if only momentarily, into the clutches of a black sultan, Burroughs confirmed
all the fears his other heroines had felt over the years. The Muslims had
no fear of the white man’s power. The sultan himself was as physically
disgusting as they all imagined. Forced marriage and years of sexual bondage
lay ahead. It was truly a fate worse than death, and it was no wonder that
while captives of Arab middlemen, these white women were desperate to avoid
being sold into Muslim harems.
Epilogue
Now, Edgar Rice Burroughs obviously
only intended to put his heroines under the threat of being sold into slavery,
and surely would never had let them suffer the degradations of life in
a black sultan’s harem. For a moment, however, let’s imagine that none
of those 16 Burroughs heroines escaped or were rescued. Instead, let’s
pretend their Arab captors successfully transported them all to those Muslim
cities on the southern edge of the desert, where they were then all sold
to black sultans. Now let’s take this fantasy one step further. Suppose
one disgustingly rich black sultan with a fetish for white women succeeded
in buying all of the aforementioned Burroughs heroines for his own. Imagine
for a moment, then, just what that harem would look like.
For starters, our lucky sultan would
possess a bevy of amazing beauties. Jane Clayton, who would no doubt have
been the eldest of the group, nevertheless was always described in glowing
terms by Burroughs with her “sweet face and graceful figure” and
her “delicate snowy skin.” Bertha Kircher was “very young and
very feminine,” and even Tarzan noticed the “rounded beauty of her
girlish form.” When he saw Guinalda, the Arab Fahd thought, “Never
in his life had he seen so beautiful a woman.” She had a “face of
almost heavenly beauty.” Zora Drinov was described as being “young
and lithe and strong” with “beautiful, inscrutable eyes.” When
the sultan gazed upon the innocent Jezebel, he would have noticed the “graceful
contours of the lithe young body, the wealth of golden hair, and the exquisite
face.” Helen Gregory was described as “blonde, 19, vivacious, with
a carriage and a charming figure” and as being “as cool and inviting
as a frosted glass.” Stanley Wood thought Gonfala, “the most bautiful
woman in the world … a girl, soft and sweet, appealing.” Tall, slender
and beautiful was Magra, with very black hair and handsome eastern features.
Anyone looking at Victoria Custer would be struck by her “large dreamy
eyes” and the “graceful lines of her slender figure.” Of course,
the cream of the crop would have been La. Burroughs described her as “physically
a creature of perfection,” a “pulsing, throbbing volcano of desire,”
and “at once a virgin and a wanton; but always — a woman.” Imagine,
then, the fortunate black sultan who nightly would have his choice from
such a harem!
When the mist of lust cleared, though,
and reality set in, it is probable that any black sultan who collected
all these Burroughs heroines might not have counted himself so fortunate
after all. You see, the typical Burroughs heroine not only had great beauty,
but also great spirit. Oh, there were a couple of spineless ones, like
Naomi Madison, but most of them were like Rhonda Terry, who declared, “The
black sultan that gets me is goin’ to be out of luck.”
Any sultan who bought this group
of women would surely have found possessing them far more difficult than
purchasing them. In fact, a forced romantic interlude with several of them
could very well have proven fatal to the average sultan. Jane Clayton,
for one, proved more than once that she would fight to defend her honor.
In The Beasts of Tarzan, she used a gun to knock Nicholas
Rokoff unconscious when he tried to assault her. Then, in Tarzan
the Untamed, she stabbed the German officer Obergatz with a spear
when he tried to force his way into her tree house. She also stabbed the
native Luvini to death when he tried to rape her in Tarzan and the
Golden Lion. Surely, any black sultan who sought to possess Jane
would have faced the same kind of stalwart resistance.
Jane wasn’t the only Burroughs heroine
with the courage to defend herself. When the Midian Jobab tried to capture
Lady Barbara Collis in Tarzan Triumphant, she shot him to
death. Zora Drinov also killed a man in Tarzan the Invincible.
Bertha Kircher even had the nerve to knock Tarzan unconscious in Tarzan
the Untamed. Of all the Burroughs heroines, though, La, the most
beautiful of all, would surely have been the most difficult for a black
sultan to possess. When a band of Arabs tried to abduct her in Tarzan
the Invincible, she stabbed two to death before they subdued her.
Later, when one of Arabs, Ibn Dammuk, entered her tent to attack her, she
slipped her knife between his ribs as well. Surely no sultan, not even
the great Turkish Sultan himself, could have tamed this passionate queen
of a lost race.
In the final analysis, then, any
black sultan who purchased a fair, white flower abducted in Tarzan’s country,
would have been better off to have heeded the old adage, “Be careful
what you wish for; you might get it.”
— the end —
