In a world of savagery, murder, and destruction, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness consistently emphasizes the importance of honesty as one of humanity’s few remaining virtues. However, this is a virtue limited only to man himself, as women are perceived as inherently “out of touch with truth” (Conrad 113)…. In this manner, it is to be argued that not only is woman’s naïve dishonesty a product of man’s debilitating assumption about the weakness of femininity, but that it is also this naïveté which perpetuates the evils of reality, and thus, facilitates the course of darkness. Perhaps the greatest indication of woman’s role as a sheltered and dishonest agent of darkness is that which surfaces through Marlow’s narrated interactions with Mr.
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Instead, they must be detached from the dark truths of life, and be immersed in a fantasy of sugarcoated notions and beautiful lies. With the Intended, at least, this proves to be an easy task. According to Marlow, she exists “without mental reservation, without suspicion, without a thought for herself” (Conrad 181). These traits leave her malleable to the lies fed to her by men, and strip her of any autonomy to think and act as an individual. In turn, she is left in the dark, and remains passive to the persistence of darkness. In consideration of the Intended and her destructive naïveté, it is salient to also examine the presence of Kurtz’s “barbarous and superb” mistress (Conrad 175). For, as Chinua Achebe argues in the essay “An Image of Africa,” the Congolese woman is the “savage counterpart to the refined, European” Intended (6). While the white woman exists to represent civilization and its idealistic ignorance, the novel’s only female racial “other” symbolizes the wilderness and its dark truths. Via Marlow’s narration, the reader can observe her steady, scrutinizing, and symbolic
Instead, they must be detached from the dark truths of life, and be immersed in a fantasy of sugarcoated notions and beautiful lies. With the Intended, at least, this proves to be an easy task. According to Marlow, she exists “without mental reservation, without suspicion, without a thought for herself” (Conrad 181). These traits leave her malleable to the lies fed to her by men, and strip her of any autonomy to think and act as an individual. In turn, she is left in the dark, and remains passive to the persistence of darkness. In consideration of the Intended and her destructive naïveté, it is salient to also examine the presence of Kurtz’s “barbarous and superb” mistress (Conrad 175). For, as Chinua Achebe argues in the essay “An Image of Africa,” the Congolese woman is the “savage counterpart to the refined, European” Intended (6). While the white woman exists to represent civilization and its idealistic ignorance, the novel’s only female racial “other” symbolizes the wilderness and its dark truths. Via Marlow’s narration, the reader can observe her steady, scrutinizing, and symbolic