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\title{The Role of Women in \\ {\em The Heart of Darkness}}
\author{Julie Schmittdiel \\ \\ 21.085---Twentieth Century Fiction}
\date{October 12, 1989}


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Joseph Conrad's {\em The Heart of Darkness} sees women from a rather
Victorian viewpoint, and often paints them as being the embodiment of
the  more pure and gentle aspects of human nature.  Conrad  makes many references
to a belief that women live in an ideal world which is separated from the
evil side of human nature explored in the story, emphasizing that they must be
protected from this darkness at all costs.  This theme can be justified
by many details within {\em The Heart of Darkness}, but at the same time
there are a number of points in the story which stand in stark contrast
to this portrayal of women as noble and exalted creatures.

One of the first incident where Conrad discusses women in an idealized
manner occurs in the very beginning of {\em The Heart of Darkness}, as
Marlow is about to depart for Africa.  During his final meeting with his
aunt, she talks to him of how noble she feels the Company's attempts to
civilize the African natives are: an opinion which makes her nephew
rather uncomfortable.  ``It's queer,'' he says, ``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.  It is too beautiful
altogether, and if they were to set it up it would go to pieces before
the first sunset.'' Marlow believes that women cannot perceive  the
horrors that men are capable of because they are so distant from them by
virtue of their sex.  Another graphic example of this attitude comes
when Marlow makes a reference to Kurtz's fiancee, known as his Intended.
He says of her: ``Oh, she is out of it---completely.  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.''  He makes
it perfectly clear in this statement that he does not feel  women
contribute to the evil in mankind he experiences during  his trip to Africa.

A second aspect of this Victorianism can be found in Conrad's
descriptions of the two principle women in {\em The Heart of Darkness}:
Kurtz's African mistress and his Intended.  Both women are shown as
being representative of a woman's great capacity for love and
faithfulness: two of the more noble aspects of human nature which are
not attributed to the men in the story.  Many of the words Marlow uses
to describe Kurtz's Intended make a point of this characteristic: one of
the first statements he makes about her is that ``she seemed as though
she would remember and mourn (Kurtz) forever...she had a mature capacity
for fidelity, for belief, for suffering.'' Later on he says of her that
``her forehead, smooth and white, remained illumined by the
unextinguishable light of belief and love.''  The detail which implies
that these qualities are universal to women is Conrad's comparison of
the Intended and Kurtz's mistress.

  As Marlow is taking Kurtz away from the Inner Station, Kurtz's
mistress is the only native who does not flee from the pilgrim's gunfire
and the frightening screech of the steamer's whistle. ``Only the barbarous and
superb woman did not so much as flinch, and stretched tragically her
bare arms after us over the sombre and glittering river.''  This picture
of love and faithfulness is referred to again by Marlow during the
episode with Kurtz's Intended. ``She put out her arms as if after a
retreating figure, stretching them back and with clasped pale hands
across the fading and narrow sheen of the window...resembling in this
gesture another one, tragic also, and bedecked with powerless charms,
stretching bare brown arms over the glitter of the infernal stream, the
stream of darkness.'' This comparison clearly implies a relationship
between the two women; a relationship which is defined by their mutual
capacity for love and devotion.

These traditional, idealized views of women are elucidated within the
story in a distinct, substantial manner. In spite of this, however,
there are numerous details in {\em The Heart of Darkness} which paint
women in an  ominous and even threatening light: details which seem
to directly conflict with Conrad's more overt Victorian themes.   

There are a number of allusions to the African wilderness which refer to
it as a feminine entity.  Conrad uses the phrase ``Nature herself,'' as
opposed to ``itself'' when describing the jungles, and this femininity
is brought up again as Marlow is discussing the steamer's trip down
river. He states that ``sometimes we came upon a station close by the
bank, clinging to the skirts of the unknown.''  While there are other
inhuman objects, such as ships, which can be spoken of as being
feminine, the use of ``skirts'' is a direct reference to the
human female.  A passage which makes this point even more vivid occurs
as Marlow describes how Kurtz was affected by his African surroundings.
``The wilderness...it had taken him, loved him, embraced him, got into
his veins, consumed his flesh, and sealed its soul to its own by the
inconceivable ceremonies of some devilish initiation. It was his spoiled
and pampered favourite.''  This portrayal of the inner jungles as a sort
of lover or mistress makes a definite connection between women and the
evils found in the wilderness.

On many occasions, the savage woman who is Kurtz's mistress is shown to
embody certain qualities of the jungles.  When she first appears to
Marlow, Conrad describes her approach as ``ominous,'' and goes on to
write that ``in the hush that had fallen suddenly upon the whole
sorrowful land, the immense wilderness, the colossal body of the fecund
and mysterious life seemed to look at her, pensive, as though it had
been looking at the image of its own tenebrous and passionate soul.''
Similarily, Marlow says that after she reaches the steamer ``she stood
looking at us without a stir, and like the wilderness itself, with an
air of brooding over an inscrutable purpose.''  Marlow sees the darkness
found in the jungles even in Kurtz's Intended, a woman who has never
known nor seen Africa. As he is listening to her speak of Kurtz at the
end of the story, he tells his audience that ``the sound of her low
voice seemed to have the accompaniment of all the other sounds, full of
mystery, desolation, and sorrow, I had ever heard.'' Since Marlow's
entire narrative focuses on the soul's mysteries and desolation that he
discovers while in the Africa, these darknesses must be part of what he
is referring to.

Even the home of Kurtz's Intended is endowed with these ominous, dark
qualities of the wilderness. Her street is described as an
``alley in a cemetery,'' while her piano is compared to a sarcophagus.
When Marlow goes to visit her, he recalls ``I asked myself what I
was doing there, with a sensation of panic in my heart as though I had
blundered into a place of cruel and absurd mysteries not fit for a human
being to behold.'' The fact that women are so often associated with
darkness and evil is not something that can be overlooked when the role
of women in the story is considered.

Another aspect of the role of women in {\em The Heart of Darkness} which
should not be overlooked is the fact that it is such a comparatively large one.
Conrad plainly states that women do not play a part in the
world of the darkness, yet he cannot seem to keep his female characters
away from it: women consistently appear at the most important moments in
the narrative. His aunt is the one who gets Marlow the job in Africa to
begin with: her influence with people in the Company is directly
responsible for sending him into the heart of darkness.  When he goes to
fill out the Company paperwork, there are two female receptionists
situated outside  the office. Marlow sees these two as ``guarding the
door of Darkness,'' a phrase which implies participation in the coming
evil as opposed to innocence from it.  Marlow spends most of the book
leading to the time when he finds Kurtz at the Inner Station, and once
again at this crucial moment a woman appears: Kurtz's mistress.  And the
most crucial moment of all, the climatic ending of the book, revolves
around Kurtz's Intended.

While it is clear that women play conflicting roles in {\em The Heart of
Darkness}, it is difficult to come up with a coherent explanation for
these contrasts.  Both the Victorian and the savage portrayals of women
are well documented, and I cannot dismiss either one of them. I also
cannot find any evidence to support a claim that perhaps one viewpoint
is being written in an ironic or insincere manner, so that in reality it
is merely
reinforcing Conrad's true opinions: Marlow seems perfectly honest and
unsarcastic in all of his statements concerning women and femininity.
Even the final moment of the story  holds an ambiguity concerning the
perception of women: Marlow tells Kurtz's Intended that his last words were
of her, but what does that imply? Is he saying this to chivalrously protect her from
the darkness, or is he literally making a connection between ``the
horror'' and the woman? In light of all the contrasting evidence as to
Conrad's view of women in the story, it does not seem possible to say.
Conrad leaves the role of women in {\em The Heart of Darkness}
unresolved, and it is possible that even he was unsure of what that role
actually was: plausibly, he many have even been unaware of how pervasive these
issues had become.
 
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