The Role of Women in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness

760 Words2 Pages

The general pattern in the work of Joseph Conrad’s novels is a male-dominated world. In the colonial journeys, dangerous activities, astonishing discoveries and many other events and experiences that generally construct the plots of his novels were the worries of men, but not female in the Victorian Era. Women in the Victorian Era were joyful with their domestic-social life and were not involved in any dangerous activities, because it was a long period of peace in Great Britain. Thus, in most Conrad’s works, there was less involvement of women characters by creating less character than men and not letting them play a primary role that control or shape the plot of the story.
The Heart of Darkness is an exception to the fact that in Conrad’s novels women are unimportant characters. Even though we know that author’s women usually do not talk so much and men outnumber them, it does not mean that they play a minor role in the novel. Female characters in the novel are hazy and under-developed not because Conrad wasn’t able to fully shape them or because he thought it was not important to do so, but because the theme of The Heart of Darkness could barely let them become a primary without the chance of making the story unrealistic. Setting a women character at the center of imperialist-colonial events would make the story hardly believable. It was also found that female characters in the story were made without a name. This can suggest the denial of their own identities, thus making them appear as minor characters as the novel demands them to be. Because of this, women in the novel become the most mystified characters, at the same time still playing an important role in The Heart of Darkness.
The women in The Heart of Darkness are di...

... middle of paper ...

... devoted when Marlow describes – “Her face had a tragic and fierce aspect of wild sorrow and of dumb pain mingled with the fear of some struggling, half-shaped resolve. She stood looking at us without a stir, and like the wilderness itself, with an air of brooding over an inscrutable purpose.” (Conrad 55-57) Marlow describes her with African wilderness, which makes the character appear to be somewhat mysterious and exotic. Something what maybe Europeans would desire.
The way Conrad portrayed women in The Heart of Darkness has made them appear to be extraordinary and unforgettable. And what’s more essential is that they give more meaning to the text and help understanding or discovering the characters placed in the center such as Marlow and Kurtz.

Works Cited

http://www.anglistik.uni-oldenburg.de/download/Lehre/Dokumente/2002_mcintire_the_women_do_not_travel.pdf

Open Document