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Conrad's Portrayal Of Women In Heart Of Darkness

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CONRAD’S PERSPECTIVE OF WOMEN IN “HEART OF DARKNESS” Joseph Conrad is always accused for not treating his female characters seriously. They remain like an undeveloped fetus in contrast to the powerful male characters that we see in “Heart of Darkness”. Attitude of Marlow, the narrator, in the text is such that women are too fragile to handle the truth of real world. This is the reason why Conrad is considered a misogynist. However, it would be clearly wrong to accept the protagonist’s mindset as that of the writer. In “Heart of Darkness”, Conrad creates two strongly identical men who would have seen the end of their life in similar manner, had not one of them learnt from another’s experience. In “Heart of Darkness”, the women characters are endowed only with a minor role. Not much is seen being spoken by them and neither of them is given an identity. This can be seen in terms of the relations these women are referred. For instance, the woman who helps Marlow procure a job is called as “Marlow’s Aunt”, while other two women are identified in terms of their relationship with Kurtz, that is, Kurtz’s mistress and Intended. In fact, Chinua Achebe has complained that Conrad has not given the “Savage Girl” any speech. If scrutinized on Marlow’s pattern of thinking regarding women, throughout the text he looks at women from the Victorian …show more content…

Females are made to appear on the peripheries and allowed only the secondary roles. The tale itself is concerned with a kind of mainstream male experience. The text is structured in such a manner that Kurtz’s “horror” is revealed to male and female readers alike, but is deliberately hidden from Kurtz’s Intended. The woman that we meet next as per the story is the Kurtz’s Mistress but I would discuss about her in the end. Before that I’ll share my views on Kurtz’s Intended. This is because there are many similarities between Marlow’s Aunt and Kurtz’s

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Ignorance of another's personal values or situation results in an impassable schism between the two parties. People fail to understand each other, and as such, they regard each other in lower lights. In “Heart of Darkness”, Joseph Conrad, through Marlow, writes his novella through a lense of ignorance and the perspective of the typical white person of the time in order to relate his story to the reader. Marlow and the accountant are contrasted with Kurtz to display the effects of evil on an individual.

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In Heart of Darkness the narrator Marlow believes that women live in their own naïve little world and that they should not interfere with the affairs of men, which he states in the following

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Often in literature, the physical journey the main character takes represents their psychological growth. In Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, Marlow’s journey into the heart of the Congo represents his progression into the darkest parts of his mind. As he travels deeper into the foreign terrain, he begins to question the world around him and himself. As Marlow begins his journey into the heart of Africa, he holds onto his idealistic belief in imperialism.

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Throughout the novel, we see Conrad gives us idea about how deceiving one could be. For example when Marlow talks about the map unfamiliar Africa and where unknown part are drawn which turns out white on the map of Africa. Africa appears to be dark through exploitation, colonization and exploration of the rest of the continents. Conrad even uses the idea of light and dark to gives us more idea of the inner status of some of the specific character. In the novel ‘Heart of Darkness’ Mr. Kurtz who is an Caucasian man, who has white skin, but who has the darkest and most corrupt soul in the novel.

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The lights from the city reflected the Thames River because London is described as being light, the light symbolizes Conrad’s view of civilization. According to Conrad civilization is where evil is present but ignored. The light is the knowledge that is gained through exploring. Conrad uses Africa and the Congo River to represent the evil that waits in the unknown. The darkness is said to be full of savages and cannibals it is further emphasized as being the uncivilized part of the world where people eat people and the savages wait in the trees and in the darkness.

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