womenhod Women in Darkness in Joseph Conrads Heart of Darkness :: Heart Darkness essays

Women in Heart of Darkness Women bet to be categorized into a separate group, serving as supplements to mens actions, characters and behavior. All of them seem to live in the realm of their own, built on the idealistic conception of the surrounding world, governed by fair rules and laws. The two women Marlow encounters in the corporations office knit inglorious wool they repre move the Fates who guard the gate of Darkness (Hell and Destruction) and to the house in a city of dead. The black colour may be associated with the Natives on whose destruction and exploitation the Company was based. Black is also equivalent to the Darkness into which Marlow descends (sin and death). The wool may intimate the thread of life. Their appearance is foreshadowed by the two black hens which decided about(predicate) Freslevens doom. Marlows aunt is depicted with an underlying irony (a dear enthusiastic soul) which points to an illusive existence of a gabardine charr in her train imagine d world. She was ready to do anything for Marlow in the put forward of a noble cause, that is, colonising the Blacks and implementing civilisation in the Darkness of Congo. She unwaveringly believes her nephew to be the detective of light, overlooking the dark level of exploiting the Natives for pecuniary benefits (ivory). The motion-picture show of a woman who is blindfolded, carrying a lighted torch which Marlow admires signifies initial intentions of Kurtz and his beliefs before he was swallowed by the tempting Darkness. He was to have been an emissary of light but remained blindfolded and did not see the consequences leading him to his self-destruction. The painful sensationting indicates the original, good nature of Kurtz, lost in the dark of the Congo. The native woman represents the whole Black community and the beauty of the wilderness, both of which were invaded by the civilised whites. She is the passionate reality, being savage and superb, wild-eyed and magnificent, reminding the whites of the Black hereditary pattern and their own culture (jewellery). The gesture of throwing her arms into the sky may symbolise a dumb outcry to God to restore the original beat when the land was not raided and there was peace and freedom (wild sorrow...dumb pain). The lack of words which remain unsaid, only reiterates her appearance and the message sent by her behaviour. Kurtzs fiancee becomes contrasted with the native woman the Intended, as sensory faculty by the name, will remain the Intended, living with an idealistic image of her husband-to-be whom she in spades believed to be of impeccable character and behaviour.