Women In Heart Of Darkness By Joseph

Conrad Essay, Research Paper

Harbingers of Truth: the Female Role in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness As our narrator, Charlie Marlow, stoically anticipates his departure for the Belgian Congo, he relates to his audience his conception of women as trivial and idle in their interaction with reality: “It’s queer how out of touch with truth women are. They live in a world of their own . . .” (27). One may be so inclined as to concur with Marlow’s dismissive statement, to discard any notion of feminine importance within Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, to focus instead upon issues of “greater importance” within the novel, such as the question of Marlow’s racism or Conrad’s narrative frame and its implications. However, to ignore the role of women in this novel would effect an injustice upon one’s fully developed interpretation of Heart of Darkness, as women play an essential part in the comprehension of these dominant issues, particularly in the unveiling of Marlow’s greatest curiosity: the veiled “truth” within the enigmatic character of Mr. Kurtz. In fact, women serve as clandestine vehicles in uncovering the impetus behind Kurtz’s penchant for the untamed Congolese wilderness, facilitating Marlow’s discovery of Kurtz’s multifarious nature, and, ultimately, illuminating Marlow’s perception of the “civilized” world. Kurtz’s captivation by the unruly African wilderness indeed baffles Marlow. What could possibly entice a man of Kurtz’s relatively “civilized” pedigree to become entranced by a land “whose banks were rotting into mud, whose waters [were] thickened into slime, . . . [resembling] the extremity of an impotent despair” (29). The answer to this question lies in an examination of Kurtz’s African companion. This ornamented African woman, however, does not directly assist us in our understanding of Kurtz’s attraction to the primordial jungle; rather, her physical description, interpreted as a reflection of her natural surroundings, acts as an indirect catalyst through which the reason for Kurtz’s presence in the jungle is disclosed. Kurtz’s African consort warrants such descriptions as “wild and gorgeous, . . . savage and superb, wild-eyed and magnificent . . . ominous and stately” (77). She exudes an unmistakable air of ominous savagery, yet retains an aura of irrefutable elegance, much like a snake whose vibrant colors provoke admiration, but whose virulent venom demands veneration.. Marlow summarizes the relationship between the African woman and her environment when he muses that “the immense wilderness, the colossal body of the fecund and mysterious life seemed to look at her, pensive, as though it has been looking at the image of its own tenebrous and passionate soul” (77). In this manner, the imagery allotted to Kurtz’s African concubine unequivocally mirrors that with which Marlow conveys the menacingly solemn Congolese jungle. While in the jungle, Marlow’s natural surroundings secrete a “stillness of an implacable force brooding over an inscrutable intention” (49). In this passage, Marlow portrays the Congolese environment as blatantly intimidating, while maintaining a demeanor which both perplexes and intrigues him. Later in the novel, Marlow again contemplates the obvious relation between wilderness and woman, as he remarks, “she stood . . . like the wilderness itself, with an air of brooding over an inscrutable purpose” (77). Both the African woman and the African ambience share an earnest ambiguity and an unfamiliar, feral nature which seduces Kurtz and forces his submission. Marlow compares this seduction to a “heavy, mute spell . . . that seemed to draw [Kurtz] to its pitiless breast by the awakening of forgotten and brutal instincts, by the memory of gratified and monstrous passions”(82-83). The savage, unruly characteristics attributed to the African jungle arouse in Kurtz his suppressed, primal “instincts”; as the physical incarnation of her environment, the African woman represents all that enraptures Kurtz with the African wilderness. In this fashion, the intangible nature of Kurtz’s obsession with the Congolese region becomes tangible, as well as lucid, in the convenient form of his African consort. Thousands of miles away, in a land so distinctly alien to the African jungle, remains Kurtz’s Intended, who, though physically distant from the novel’s primary setting, nevertheless offers as much insight into Kurtz’s character as her African counterpart. Outwardly, it appears as though Marlow’s argument portraying women as “out of touch with truth” may accurately depict Kurtz’s Intended. However, her failure to comprehend the entire “truth” concerning Kurtz’s complex character is precisely what elucidates certain aspects of his multifaceted personality. As Marlow consoles and converses with Kurtz’s Intended, she proceeds to elaborate upon Kurtz’s rare combination of remarkable virtues; to her, the deceased Kurtz was comprised of nothing less than “promise, . . . greatness, . . . [a] generous mind, . . . [and] a noble heart” (93). In her relationship with Kurtz, she had grown accustomed to his brilliant, dignified disposition; he had left her with no reason to suspect in him an entirely different person. Certainly a woman who “understood him better than any one on earth,” who was convinced of Kurtz’s incapability for anything less than greatness, could not have foreseen such sinister lack of restraint and grotesque disregard for humanity as Kurtz had exhibited in the jun