Essay about Feminist Imagery in Joseph Conrads Heart of...

Feminist Imagery in Joseph Conrads Heart of Darkness Many feminist critics have used Joseph Conrads Heart of Darkness to show how Marolw constructs parallels and personification between women and the inanimate jungle that he speaks of. The jungle that houses the savages and the remarkable Kurtz has many feminine characteristics. By the end of the novel, it is the same feminized wilderness and darkness that Marlow identifies as being the cause of Kurtzs mental and physical collapse. In Heart of Darkness, the landscape is feminized through a rhetoric of personification. The landscape is constructed as an entity that speaks and acts, and is consequently made to appear as something which is alive. The projection of a face on the†¦show more content†¦She must have had the value of several elephant tusks upon her. She was savage and superb, wild-eyed and magnificent; there was something ominous and stately in her deliberate progress. And in the hush that had fallen suddenly upon the whole sorrowful land, the immense wilderness, the colossal body of the fecund and mysterious life seemed to look at her, pensive, as though it has been looking at the image of its own tenebrous and passionate soul. She came abreast of the steamer, stood still, and faced us. Her long shadow fell to the waters edge. Her face had a tragic and fierce aspect of wild sorrow and of dumb pain mingled with the fear of some struggling, half-shaped resolve. She stood looking at us without a stir, and like the wilderness itself, with an air of brooding over an inscrutable purpose. The wilderness is figuratively embodied in the form of the native woman, and simultaneously personified as a particular type of femininity. The woman becomes a figure for the fearful consuming embrace of the wilderness and darkness which Marlow identifies as having been the cause of Kurtzs collapse, and from which he is protected only by his restraint: Suddenly she opened her bared arms and threw them up rigid above her head as though in an uncontrollable desire toShow MoreRelated Oppositions in Joseph Conrads Heart of Darkness Essay1209 Words   |  5 PagesOppositions in Heart of Darkness      Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Joseph Conrads Heart of Darkness is full of oppositions.   The most obvious is the juxtaposition of darkness and light, which are both present from the very beginning, in imagery and in metaphor.   The novella is a puzzling mixture of anti-imperialism and racism, civilization and savagery, idealism and nihilism.   How can they be reconciled?   The final scene, in which Marlow confronts Kurtzs Intended, might be expected to provide resolution.   However, itRead MoreHeart Of Darkness By Joseph Conrad942 Words   |  4 Pages When read at face value, Joseph Conrad’s novella, Heart of Darkness, portrays a tale of white, imperial, oppression of the African natives of the Congo. However, when viewed through the lenses of psychoanalysis and feminism, different interpretations emerge. Psychoanalysis provides a glimpse into the mind of Marlow. The story reads as if it takes place within a dream world. Feminist theory examines the perceptible qualities associa ted with women. Each theory presents a new way of interpreting andRead MoreAnalysis Of Conrad s Heart Of Darkness1729 Words   |  7 PagesIn Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad limits the amount and activity of his female characters, especially through the protagonist Marlow. Marlow merely reduces women into creatures of a different world and fails to see the importance of females. However, through this oppressive view on women, Conrad demonstrates Marlow’s ironic subjugation of women. Although in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, women simply serve as symbols while Marlow attempts to display himself as masculine, Conrad reveals the influenceRead MoreOne Significant Change That Has Occurred in the World Between 1900 and 2005. Explain the Impact This Change Has Made on Our Lives and Why It Is an Important Change.163893 Words   |  656 Pages(2006): 1–28. 46. Patrick K. O’Brien and Leandro Prados de la Escosura, â€Å"Agricultural Productivity and European Industrialization, 1890–1980,† Economic History Review 45, no. 3 (1992): 514–536. 47. Moya, Cousins and Strangers, 150–153, 266–276. Joseph P. Ferrie, â€Å"History Lessons: The End of American Exceptionalism? Mobility in the United States since 1850,† Journal of Economic Perspectives 19, no. 3 (2005): 199–215 also shows exceptionally high levels 50 †¢ CHAPTER 1 of upward mobility