Heart Of Darkness Gender Roles

Joseph Conrad’s novella, Heart of Darkness, published in 1899, is known for its controversy regarding race, culture, and gender. Although very few women appear in the novella, the way they are regarded, especially by Marlow, is thoroughly distinct as well as undeviating. Marlow’s contempt for women is especially expressed through three significant female characters in Heart of Darkness, which include Marlow’s aunt, Kurtz’s African mistress, and Kurtz’s Intended. These characters serve different purposes in the novel, but are regarded by Marlow in similar ways, primarily because of their gender. Marlow, in particular, mainly regards women as being too naïve for their own good. Therefore, overall, from Marlow’s perspective, the role of women in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is to serve as a man’s inferior, as women are too naïve and fragile to be considered as a man’s equal. To begin, Marlow soundly regards women as too naïve for their own good. For example, after recounting a memory of a conversation with a woman, Marlow states: “It’s queer how out of touch with truth women are! They live in a world of their own… It is too beautiful altogether, and if they were to set it up it would go to pieces before the first sunset. Some confounded fact we men have been living contentedly with
Marlow’s beliefs are also highlighted by Jeremy Hawthorn’s article “The Women of Heart of Darkness,” in which he states that, in fact, “it is Marlow rather than Conrad who argues that women should be kept in that ‘world of their own’ in Heart of Darkness” and that it was Conrad’s “artistic insight into the way in which gender divisions enter into the duplicities of imperialism” (Hawthorn 414). This highlights how, although Marlow’s perspective on women is enigmatic, it is emphasized for a proper