Gender Discrimination In Joseph Conrad's Heart Of Darkness

Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is a classic novella, which is studied in several high schools and colleges. Although this book is considered brilliant, it has stirred up a lot of controversy regarding its gender-bias discrimination. Conrad’s depiction of women is silent and sexist. He refers to women as having no voice and disdained by the paternalistic narrator – Marlow, who admits to not understanding the world that women live in. This has bothered many readers of this novella, and in particular, Sandy Andersson. Sandy Andersson is a young woman currently in her third year at New York University (NYU) studying journalism. Sandy has her own website where she posts her personal opinion of the books she has read and which ones she liked or disliked. She has caused quite the commotion after she read Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and decided to

Specifically, the novella shows readers three different types of depictions men had of women in the late 1800’s, which is also known as the imperialistic era - there is the naïve woman, the mistress and the wealthy widow. In Heart of Darkness, Kurtz Intended personifies the naïve woman, the native African woman personifies the mistress, and finally, Marlow’s aunt personifies the wealthy widow. All of these characters you include are not even given names simply because they are women. Also when they are mentioned it is very short and brief. This further supports existence of sexism in your novella.

To conclude, indeed your novella does somewhat have women play an important role due to the fact that each woman represents something, for example the Native African woman represents purity. However it is still offensive in the way Marlow speaks of women and how the female characters are not developed as much as the male ones. As a result, women are prohibited from attaining “positions of power, knowledge and