Through a feministic perspective, Joseph
Conrad’s Heart of Darkness degrades
women to simple, mere symbolic tools which only exist to drive the dark, crude
human nature illustrated in the novella.
Conrad demeans women explicitly through Marlow’s comments on their roles
and implicitly by refraining to give them proper identities. The novella places women aside as innocent,
simple creatures unworthy and incapable of fathoming the developing political
constructs’ complexities. For example, when
referring to Kurt’s “intended,” Marlow stated, “they – the women I mean – are
out of it – should be out of it. We must
help them to stay in that beautiful world of their own, lest ours gets worse.” Here, Conrad suggests women’s innocent nature
where their mutual fantasies have developed a relatively tranquil realm,
ignorant of the dark, dirty work of the real-world. Earlier in the book, Marlow degrades women
again and further suggests their ignorance: “It’s queer how out of touch with
truth women are. They live in a world of
their own, and there has never been anything like it, and never can be.” Besides the explicit, demeaning comments,
Conrad labels the female characters by their relations to men or their jobs
rather than their actual names. In Part
I when Marlow visits the doctor, he enters a room where two women are “guarding
the door of Darkness” who are later referred to as the “old knitters of black
wool.” Throughout the novella, women are
simply used as levers to exploit the dark symbolism of the crude human nature
and are degraded to ignorant, innocent creatures.
Campbell, having been spellbound by your illustrious vocabulary,I must assert my deepest adirmation for you as a writer and for your response to Conrad's novella. I am glad you pointed out an often overlooked idea of the novella with great textual support. I think becuase the reader is so heavily drawn to the degradation of the native people, we overlook the description of the belittlement of women in the text. The tale is densely filled with negative characteristics that connote naivity or incivility in the people, while only having a loose focus on women. Yet, as you mentioned, women are manipulated throughout the story and are used to depict "dark symbolism".
ReplyDeleteI agree that women are degraded throughout the novel. For the most part, the women are silent having little to no real affect on any of the story. They are a mere side note. The women that are introduced mainly function to reinforce Kurtz and Marlow's view of women as naive and ignorant. Additionally, the women are used to seemingly represent the wealth of the men. While it is stated multiple times that women live in their own little world, unaware of their surroundings, they ultimately become the show of wealth of their men. This idea even further degrades women.
ReplyDeleteIt is evident that Conrad truly was speaking his political stances through the dialogue of his characters. Building on what everyone has said, the women are utterly meaningless in the novel. The fact that they are only referred to in passing, or as a whole group as opposed to individuals, lumps them with the natives, which, we all know were treated with literally zero respect. I really wish that women HAD been more of an influence in this novel; it would have provided the story with more dynamics than a testosterone-driven international power struggle.
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