Is Joseph Conrad Sexist?

Sexism is usually defined as prejudice or discrimination based on sex and is usually towards women.  Now, Heart of Darkness does not have that many women in the book at all, but there is still something to be gleaned from the way that the author describes them.  Honestly, it is impossible to know what Joseph Conrad truly thought of the fairer sex based on this work alone, but his main characters have quite a bit to say about it.  

Marlow states several times that he thinks that the women in the novel live in their own world.  He believes that they live in a separate world where everything is rosy and they are blocked from any sort of truth.  At the end of the book, when Marlow is talking to Kurtz’s fiancee, he says that women are not only separated from the world, but that they ought to be separated from it.  He believes this so strongly that he lies to her, something that he had previously said that he detested.  He claims that “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, lest ours gets worse.”  This idea that women are powerless, delicate creatures that need to be protected, while shocking now, was relatively common for 1899, when this book was written.

There are no well-rounded female characters in Heart of Darkness. Kurtz’s fiancee is the picture of perfect “womanly virtue”.  She is described as having fair hair and pale skin, with deep trusting eyes.  The description reminds one of an angel, and she is the symbolic representation of all that remains untainted in the world.

On the other hand, Kurtz’s mistress is a savage woman.  She frightens the Harlequin and is almost always described as doing something loud and brash.  She is probably meant as a personification of the wilderness.  Both of these women come off more as symbols than as actual characters.

Still, although the women in this novel are not well developed, they are not always weak.  Kurtz’s mistress, for one, is an impressive figure.  When the Russian mentions her, he says “she talked like a fury to Kurtz for an hour pointing at me now and then… Luckily for me, I fancy Kurtz felt too ill that day to care, or there would have been mischief.”  This implies that she has some amount of influence with Kurtz.  His “Intended” is the central character at the end of the novel, frequently interrupting the main character to state her opinions, however misguided.  Even Marlow’s aunt, who does not really appear in the novel, is the reason that he has gotten this job in the first place.

But even though these women have influence over the narrative, they are still marginalized.  For example, the first glimpse that Marlow gets of the African mistress does not say one word about what she actually looks like.  He mentions her leggings, her brass gauntlets, and her necklaces, but not anything about her face, body, or expression.  He perceives the mistress as being no more than a spoil of the land, as if Kurtz owns her.  To him, she represents merely Kurtz’s lust, which Marlow is disgusted by.

One of the main ideas that is associated with women, especially women who are symbolic of something, is fertility.  The Intended’s description makes her seem like a ghost or a vampire.  The room gets darker when she is around.  Marlow says that she “floats towards him”.  One thing true about all of these supernatural creatures, be they vampires, ghosts, or angels: They are unable to have children.  The scene when the Intended appears is at the end of the novel.  A whole year has passed since Kurtz’s death and she is still in mourning.  Since she is meant to represent the most perfect form of womanhood, the reader can only assume that she will virtuously mourn Kurtz forever.  Thus, she will not only be unable to have children, but she will be unwilling to have them as well.

Thus, women are being held to unfair standards.  The perfect wife is supposed to be angelic, chaste, and sterile, but it is safe to assume that some women must eventually have children at some point.

Or, perhaps, she is only meant to represent the archetypal widow, one who drapes herself dramatically over graves, completely overtaken with grief.  The archetypal widow is no longer allowed to live a full life, because what is considered the proper thing to do is to wither away in a hazy, romantic fashion.

No matter how you look at it, though, there is a misogynistic undertone throughout the novel.  The amount of influence that women have over the plot is no excuse for Conrad’s degrading marginalization of women, his generalizing, his typifying, and dehumanizing of all women.  This lense of looking at women is not entirely excused by the opinions of the time either.  States had begun allowing women to vote almost thirty years before this book was even published.

In short, is Heart of Darkness sexist?  The evidence points to the affirmative.