Misogyny, the hatred or dislike of females, is a recurrent theme in World Literature. Women’s suffrage was at its prime between 1840 and 1920. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad and Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, two stories based in Africa, show different points of misogyny, the first being from the time of women’s suffrage, and the latter being after the women’s suffrage movement. The value, view, and role of women was undermined greatly in these two novels.
Heart of Darkness was published in 1902, deep in with time of the women’s suffrage movement. The author, Joseph Conrad, wrote this novella with a tone that is accepting of sexism. There is no respect for women in Heart of Darkness. Unlike Heart of Darkness, Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe expresses a non-accepting tone of sexism and shows women in a better image, although sexism does play a large role in the story. This story was published in 1958, right after the women’s suffrage movement, so the non-accepting tone is understandable.
Not one of the three female characters in given a name in Heart of Darkness. This makes it seem as though women do not matter enough to be given a name. In Things Fall Apart, each woman is given a name. Only three important instances involve women in Heart of Darkness, Marlow’s conversation with his aunt, Kurtz painting, and Marlow’s conversation with Kurtz’s fiancée. Besides these three events, women are kept out of the story.
“Girl! What? Did I mention a girl? Oh, she is out of it – completely. They – the women I mean – are out of it – should be out of it. We must help them to stay in that beautiful world of their own least our gets worse. Oh, she had to be out of it. You should have heard the disinterred body of Mr. Kurtz saying, ...
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These two novels show sexism at two different points in history. Although Things Fall Apart downgrades women, they have a place in society, unlike Heart of Darkness, where women are almost irrelevant. The view and status of women in society has changed throughout time. Heart of Darkness shows the before the movement phase, and Things Fall Apart shows the after the movement phase. There are similarities between the view of women in Things Fall Apart and the present time. Women are still used as a metaphor for weak, and calling a man a woman is still considered an insult.
Works Cited
Heart of Darkness. The Bedford Anthology of World Literature. Ed. Paul Davis. Vol. 6. Boston,
MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2003. 35-96. Print.
Things Fall Apart. The Bedford Anthology of World Literature. Ed. Paul Davis. Vol. 6. Boston,
MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2003. 1023-1112. Print.
Watts, Cedric. 'Heart of Darkness.' The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad. Ed. J.H. Stape. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. 45-62.
One cannot escape one’s fate. The theme of fate and freewill is central to William Shakespeare’s play Richard III, in which Richard III battles with the two in his quest for the crown. Richard seeks to escape his fate as a deformed and unfinished hunchback by using what little power he has to gain more power and respect. Although Richard thinks that he is acting on his own free will, fate still controls him throughout his journey. In addition, Richard’s fate is expressed in the form of a curse that Margaret delivers as punishment for his crimes against her and her family. Even though everyone sees Margaret as an irrational person, her curses against Richard and several other people end up coming true. Although Richard’s fate comes true, free will is still seen throughout the play, namely in the struggle of conscience.
Meyer, Michael. The Bedford Introduction to Literature. Ed. 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2008. 2189.
Bausch, Richard, and R. V. Cassill. "Heart of Darkness." The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction. New York: W.W. Norton, 2006. 126-86. Print.
The Norton Anthology World Literature Volume 2: 1650 to the Present. Ed. Martin Puchner. Shorter 3rd ed. New York: Norton, 2013. Print
Davis, Paul, Gary Harrison, David Johnson, Patricia Smith, and John Crawford. The Bedford Anthology of World Literature: The Twentieth Century, 1900-The Present. 6. United States of America: Bedford/St.Martin's, 2003. Print.
... World Literature. Ed. Martin Puncher. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2012. 441. Print.
Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart. First Anchor Books Edition. New York, NY: Random House, Inc., 1959. Print.
...present powerful characters, while females represent unimportant characters. Unaware of the influence of society’s perception of the importance of sexes, literature and culture go unchanged. Although fairytales such as Sleeping Beauty produce charming entertainment for children, their remains a didactic message that lays hidden beneath the surface; teaching future generations to be submissive to the inequalities of their gender. Feminist critic the works of former literature, highlighting sexual discriminations, and broadcasting their own versions of former works, that paints a composite image of women’s oppression (Feminist Theory and Criticism). Women of the twenty-first century serge forward investigating, and highlighting the inequalities of their race in effort to organize a better social life for women of the future (Feminist Theory and Criticism).
A. Michael. Matin. Introduction to Heart of Darkness and Selected Short Fiction. New York: Barnes & Noble Classics, 2008. Print.
* Conrad, Joseph. “Heart of Darkness” in The Norton Anthology of English Literature, M.H. Abrams, general editor. (London: W.W. Norton, 1962, 2000)
The two other female characters are not mentioned until much later in the story, after Marlow has arrived at the Inner Station. When Marlow reaches this point in his tale, he jumps ahead and tells a little bit about The Intended, Kurtz’s fianceé who was to marry Kurtz when he returned. The Intended woman does not appear until the very end of the novelette, in which Marlow visits her and lies to her about Kurtz’s dying words. The Intended had a more significant role in the story than Marlow’s aunt; however, her role as a whole was somewhat limited and did not affect the main theme of the story.
A. The Heart of Darkness. New York: Knopf, 1993. Print.
Things Fall Apart, a novel by Nigerian author Chinua Achebe is a story about an Igbo village in Nigeria and a man that once was a powerful influence in the tribe, but begins to lose his influence as Nigeria is colonized and Christian missionaries come to evangelize. A deeper look at the novel, with a feminist critics point of view, tells a lot about the Igbo people as well as the author’s thoughts about women in the novel. Feminist critics look at female authors, and female characters and their treatment as well as women’s issues in society. Since Achebe is a male, the main focus of feminist literary criticism for Things Fall Apart is the women in the novel and their issues as well as the Igbo view of gender identity. Many issues that women
The "Heart of Darkness," written by Joseph Conrad in 1899 as a short story, is about two men who face their own identities as what they consider to be civilized Europeans and the struggle to not to abandon their themselves and their morality once they venture into the "darkness." The use of "darkness" is in the book's title and in throughout the story and takes on a number of meanings that are not easily understood until the story progresses. As you read the story you realize that the meaning of "darkness" is not something that is constant but changes depending on the context it used.