Conrad’s Chiaroscuro:

The Portrayal of Women in Heart of Darkness

The Half-Blood Prince

AP Literature and Composition

January 31, 2015

“Surrounded by darkness yet enfolded in light” writes Alan Brennert in Moloka’i. So too,

are the sundry characters of Joseph Conrad’s renowned novella, Heart of Darkness. While light

and dark imagery captures the struggle between the good and the evil of human nature in

Marlow’s tale, it also reveals the seemingly minor role of women as influential over the course

of the entire novella. The women, frequently discredited yet powerful in and of themselves, aid

in reversing the conventional symbolism of light and dark.

Marlow’s aunt is the first female character to appear in the novella; however, her

appearance is not as steeped in light and dark imagery as the other female characters. Marlow

imparts to his listeners “—would you believe it?—I tried the women. I, Charlie Marlow, set the

women to work—to get a job” (Conrad 71). In this first mention of women, Marlow’s sarcasm

immediately denounces them as inferior. Yet, ironically, the women set Marlow’s quest in

motion while the men dismiss him as casually as he does the women. After Marlow’s aunt

reaches out to her connections to secure him a job with a company in the Congo, Marlow

inwardly balks at her idea that he is “an emissary of light,” the civilizing force of Europe, and

then discourses on “how out of touch with the truth women are” (76). This portrays the colonial

forces as “light,” but Marlow lumps her as blind to the truth since he already knows this to be

untrue, that “underneath the veneer of a noble mission associated with the color of pure light,

there is the blackness of decay and corruption” within the Company (Qu and Li). With this irony,

Marlow shrugs off her ignorance as an immutable fact of the separated women’s world. Her

blindness places her in the dark, yet she exemplifies the European perspective as the civilizing

force being the light. Although she is “confined to [her] own territory, metonymically

embodying [one of] the separate cultural, racial, and geographical identities at play,” she

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captures one of the multifarious examples of ambiguous light and dark imagery, illuminating the

blurred lines between right and wrong (McIntire).

        The second female characters introduced work for the Company at its headquarters in

what is most likely Brussels. The dark imagery surrounding these women presents them as

having the ability to control the fate of all they meet—including Marlow. They sit in the office

knitting black wool, orchestrating Company activities like the “Spinner” and “Allotter,” two of

the classical Fates of European mythology (Bode).  While they appear to be “a picture of stark

feminine domesticity—with their continual knitting, austere clothing, and plain countenance,”

Marlow’s descriptions cast them as orchestrators of the entire operation, all-powerful (Brent).

One of the women has “a wart on one cheek, and silver-rimmed spectacles [that hang] on the tip

on her nose” and “a cat [reposing] on her lap” (Conrad 74). Her witch-like appearance fuels

Marlow’s uneasiness, lending her the image of an uncannily wise yet authoritative woman.

The image of a witch also reflects Marlow’s sailor’s fear of women in general, with their

unpredictable power. Marlow describes the “uncanny and fateful” knitters as “guarding the door

of Darkness” (Conrad 74). Their role here presents the Company and its activities in Africa as

distinctly dark, reversing the Aunt’s image of the righteous light. Just like his Aunt, however,

they still hold power over Marlow’s fate by being the second feminine influence sending him off

to Africa. Their role greeting the men of the company “imbues them with both the

foreknowledge of the fate of each man, and suggests the dark, evil underbelly of the Company”

(Brent). Their influence connects to a separate instance of the dark yet feminine: the original

captain of Marlow’s ship, a man named Fresleven, was killed in “a misunderstanding about some

hens … two black hens” (Conrad 72). Again, a pair of dark females determines the life or death

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of prominent male characters. Even insignificant hens sway the fate of the story and Marlow’s

fate, opening an opportunity in the Company for him through the death of another man.

Kurtz’s painting presents another paramount instance of a woman enshrouded in light

and dark imagery. In the portrait, a woman carries a lighted torch into the surrounding darkness,

blindfolded, though “the effect of the torchlight on the face [is] sinister” (Conrad 92). The

painting showcases women’s ability to bring light into the dark, but the subject’s blindness

questions the certainty of these white and black definitions. Most simply, it indicates women’s

power to alter the balance of light and dark. Rita Bode suggests that the woman represents

Justice, who “is traditionally represented as a draped and blindfolded woman.” However, there

are no scales of Justice, and while the blindfold “should indicate impartiality,” it is instead

“juxtaposed to the torch, [suggesting] rather the pointed absence of light.”  Perhaps the

insinuation that Justice is blind or unbalanced lends the painting its sinister quality. The woman’s

blindness, however, is reminiscent of Marlow’s assertion that women cannot see the truth.

Despite this, she still holds the power of light in her hands.

The painting also mirrors Kurtz’s death scene, ironically linking his darkly captivating

character with the unnamed holder of the light. Kurtz utters that he is “‘lying here in the dark

waiting for death’” though the “light [is] within a foot of his eyes” (Conrad 147). Kurtz’s

supposed inability to see the light leads to his epiphany of horror while the woman’s inability to

see accentuates the same surrounding dark. Together, their blindness emphasizes introspection,

the reflection of one’s true human nature, instead of being misled by the abstruse light and dark

surroundings.  The inability to accurately judge the light and dark, good and evil, is central to

Marlow’s struggle with his experience in the Congo. Everywhere he turns, Europeans purport

themselves to be the white, the good, the bearers of light into a savage, impenetrable darkness.

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However, their rapacious greed, petty jealousies, and consistent cruelty reveal them to be the

forces of dark. Before launching into his tale, Marlow discourses on the Romans encountering

savage England, describing them as “men enough to face the darkness” yet “going at it blind”

(69). This blends Marlow’s imperialistic experience with Kurtz and the woman’s blindness,

characterizing darkness not as the ignorance of supposedly inferior civilizations but as the faults

of human nature, the inability to seek understanding before denouncing the dark unknown as

evil.

In the heart of the jungle, Kurtz’s African mistress presents the epitome of womanly

power. At the Inner Station, this opulently dressed woman appears with “a low jingle, a glint of

yellow metal, a sway of fringed draperies,” and “[opens] her bared arms and [throws] them up

rigid above her head … and at the same time the swift shadows [dart] out on the earth, [sweep]

around on the river, gathering the steamer into a shadowy embrace” (Conrad 137). She, like the

two knitters, has the startling ability to control the darkness. This power suggests that she is the

missing Fate, the cutter of life, since she “seems to cut his ties with that other world on which

Marlow relied—the world of truth, reality, facts … fulfilling [the knitters’] ominous warnings

that there is no return” (Bode). As the missing Fate, the African mistress further highlights

women’s power over men since she not only loosens Marlow’s hold on reality but also ties Kurtz

to the darkness. Just as the knitters guard the door of darkness, she literally holds the dark power

of the jungle at her fingertips. Analogously, Marlow describes the jungle in feminine terms,

referring to it as “the virgin forest” which has “caressed [Kurtz] … taken him, loved him,

embraced him, got into his veins” (Conrad 98; 121). This feminine description of the jungle

reinforces the African mistress’s dark allure and influence, underscoring the raw power of both

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the jungle and women. Also, the jungle is one of the central forces behind Marlow’s epic,

insinuating again that women play a larger role in the tale than inconsequential side characters.    

Of all the female characters in the novella, Kurtz’s Intended is perhaps the most

significant. Her appearance is the last installation in Marlow’s tale, and it is bombarded with

light and dark imagery of every size and description. Marlow visits her at her apartment upon his

return to Europe and the sepulchral city, moving through a “high and ponderous door” and then a

dark “mahogany door” to see her (Conrad 152; 153). According to Rita Bode, the “emphasis on

doors here as he makes his way to the Intended and the descriptions and associations of these

doors recall that fateful ‘“door of Darkness”’ guarded over by the two kitting women,”

cementing “the Intended’s placement in the continuum of the novella’s female figures.” The

gloom and foreboding of the setting mark the beginning of Marlow’s uneasy mien concerning

the Intended, an unease that only grows as he talks with her and “the darkness [deepens]”

(Conrad 155). Marlow describes the encounter with a deluge of light and dark imagery; the

fireplace is a cold white monument, the piano a dark sarcophagus. The Intended wears all black,

yet her face looms out of the dark with “fair hair, this pale visage … surrounded by an ashy halo

from which the dark eyes [look] out” (153). Her power to be a beacon in the dark recalls the

woman in the painting while the darkness evokes the jungle, complimenting the African mistress

and reviving its influence over Marlow. The flurry of light and dark loosens Marlow’s grasp on

the truth, and the darkness nearly overwhelms him, causing him to lie to the Intended about

Kurtz’s last words. While the apparent necessity for this lie presents her (and women in general)

as fallible and too weak to bear the truth of Kurtz’s dark conclusions, Marlow is unable to see

her as anything but light, her face haloed in the midst of the surrounding dark, which casts

women as the bearers of the truth. This encounter “seals Marlow’s experience of the world as a

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dark one and makes him forevermore a seeker of the more balanced truth that he has lost”

(Bode).

Over the course of the novella, light is associated with truth—the painting’s torch and the

Aunt’s emissary into the dark, the Intended’s face. Darkness is associated with power—the

knitters’ wool and the African mistress’s shadows, the heart of darkness swaying the hearts of

men. Imagery of the light and of the dark, where they occur together, in faces and doorways,

cities and skies, ultimately present morality and human nature as ambiguous. And yet, where this

chiaroscuro occurs with the novella’s rare female characters, it reveals them to be the bearers of

the light and the wielders of the dark, the ultimate power and authority over the men, the jungle,

and the world of Heart of Darkness.

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Works Consulted

Bode, Rita. "'They ... Should Be Out of It': The Women of Heart of Darkness." Short Story

Criticism 69 (2004): Literature Resource Center. Web. 20 Jan. 2015.

<http://go.galegroup.com/>.

Brent, Liz. "Critical Essay on 'Heart of Darkness.'" Short Stories for Students 12 (2001):

Literature Resource Center. Web. 26 Jan. 2015. <http://go.galegroup.com/>.

Caie, Qu, and Xiaoxi Li. "Light and Dark Symbols in Heart of Darkness." Asian Social Sciences

4.5 (2008): 85-87. PDF file.

Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. New York: New American Library, 1950. Print.

Mclntire, Gabrielle. "The Women Do Not Travel: Gender, Difference, and Incommensurability

in Conrad's Heart of Darkness." Modern Fiction Studies 48.2 (2002): ProQuest Research

Library. Web. 25 Jan. 2015. <http://search.proquest.com>.

Nofal, Khalil Hassan. "Darkness in Conrad's Heart of Darkness: A Linguistic and Stylistic

Analysis." Theory and Practice in Language Studies 3.3 (2013): Literature Resource

Center. Web. 20 Jan. 2015. <http://go.galegroup.com/>.

Thompson, Terry W. "Conrad's Heart of Darkness." Explicator 60.1 (2001): 27-30. Academic

Search Premier. Web. 20 Jan. 2015. <http://web.b.ebscohost.com/>.

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