The Role Of Women In Joseph Conrad's The Heart Of Darkness

A Separate World Throughout The Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad (personified in the book as Charlie Marlow) conveys his belief that women, in their belief of a better world one that men do not see, are mentally of an unconnected planet of their own. Conrad imparts the reader with the many reasons why women think this way and why men continue to let this be. He also shows the reader what he thinks a woman’s role is and what it should be. By the end Conrad communicates that the blackness of Earth is all around us and to tell these women who do not see the world in this way, would in turn be an even darker act. The role of women in The Heart of Darkness is at first seen as one that is very much a backseat role to that of a man’s in the empirical

Though it is the traditional image of upper class England marriages it is not the way he describe Kurtz’s Intended. The women of Europe have ideals, naivety, and they are the brightness in the midst of the darkness as described of Kurtz’s Intended in the dark room (2009). His Intended is the example that Conrad gives us to show what the ideal woman of Europe is to men, and the hope of Europe’s society are entangled with these ideals. Kurtz’s Intended was also his social equal in that she is civilized, she claims to know him better than anyone (2009) yet the reader is unsure that she truly does and perhaps she only knows the surface of his personality, just as the relationships of the higher classes in England were generally impersonal. The vast contrast of his mistress is that she embodies all that Africa seems to be able to promise in its primality, mystery, beauty, but also in darkness as though they show that they know the darkness

Why would someone shelter them from reality? Perhaps to save their innocence, to allow hope to flourish, or maybe it is an attempt by men to save face of their empirical and even immoral endeavors. For if women knew the truth of the world that they truly live in they may not be able to take the harsh realities of it or they may not even be able to accept what society or their husbands have done if exposed to such things. Thus keeping them in the dark about such actions would be a logical course of action by men, to protect them in some chivalric act. Maybe this is the reason or perhaps the women of Europe know the true aspects of this world and chose not to accept it as truth instead living in the world that they want reality to be, shaping the way they think not to be that of the world but to change the world to be that of the way they think. Though the true meaning of helping women keep this separate world alive in their mind could be and probably is something as simple as not men not wanting to crush the hopes of women in the world and in the people they love, as Marlow said, “It would have been too dark-too dark altogether…” (2011). This would be as to say that though Conrad believes that to tell women the truth would be the just thing to do, it in turn would be a much harder truth to bear rather