What Is Kurtz's View Of Women

This article analyzes the way Austen portrays women in her novels. Kruger mentions that Jane Austen’s work is often deprived by the

"The horror, the horror!" Kurtz exclaims prior to his last breath of life on earth. In those final moments, Kurtz was able to say something so true about the whole mess of human life. A life dominated by the fittest, perceived differently through each human eye, and full of judgement lacking understanding of all sides. The various ways the world is viewed causes many problems amongst its people. Whether they are about racism, wealth, or even common sense, conflicts are still subject to arouse. Why? The answer to this is not yet clear because of its complexity and endless variables. Yet what is clear is that it ties into two other aspects-prejudice and social

    Literature is never interpreted in exactly the same way by two different readers. A prime example of a work of literature that is very ambiguous is Joseph Conrad's, "Heart of Darkness". The Ambiguities that exist in this book are Marlow's relationship to colonialism, Marlow's changing feelings toward Kurtz, and Marlow's lie to the Intended at the end of the story.

Women in society sometimes are subject to objectification, meaning they are treated as a mere object; unequal to men. In the novel, The House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton, this holds true, except, women are said to be equal to men, but are not treated in this exact manner. Lily is apart of the upper class society of New York and attends parties, gambles all her money, and throughout the whole book tries to marry a rich man. Wharton’s feminism is apparent in the way she treats Lily; Lily gets through society, merely by keeping up her appearances. Beauty and appearance are everything in this society, if you are beautiful you will get far in society, however, the only thing Lily is lacking is wealth. In the novel, feminism is present with the idea of appearances and the symbol of money is used to convey that men are needed to control a women’s social stability.

The women of the story are not treated with the respect, which reflects their social standings. The first image of the women that the reader gets is a typical housewife. They are imaged as “wearing faded house dresses and

    Joseph Conrad's 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 Kurtz's Intended, might be expected to provide resolution.  However, it seems, instead, merely to focus the dilemmas in the book, rather than solving them.

There is an abundance of literature in which characters become caught between colliding cultures. Often, these characters experience a period of growth from their exposure to a culture that’s dissimilar to their own. Such is the case with Marlow, Joseph Conrad’s infamous protagonist from ‘Heart of Darkness’. Marlow sets off to Africa on an ivory conquest and promptly found himself sailing into the heart of the Congo River. Along the way he is faced with disgruntled natives, cannibals, and the ominous and foreboding landscape. Marlow’s response to these tribulations is an introspective one, in which he calls into question his identity. This transcending of his former self renders the work as a whole a

What makes Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness more than the run of the mill adventure tale, is its moral complexity. By the end of the novel, we find a protagonist who has immense appreciation for a man who lacks honest redemption, the mysterious Mr. Kurtz. It is the literal vivaciousness and unyielding spirit of this man, his pure intentionality, which Marlow finds so entrancing and which leaves the reader with larger questions regarding the human capacity. Therefore, Heart of Darkness is profoundly different given its character complexity and ambiguous narrative technique which ultimately deliver home a message of the complex motivations and capabilities of mankind.

In the novella “Daisy Miller” by Henry James, women are viewed as the inferior and weaker gender, as they are expected to abide by all of society's’ laws while at the same time being constantly diminished as human beings. When Winterbourne and Daisy first meet, Daisy is looking for her little brother Randolph, who Winterbourne was previously having a conversation with. Daisy and Winterbourne have a conversation about Randolph’s education, all the while, Winterbourne’s eyes are focused on Daisy. Winterbourne tunes Daisy out while his eyes wander to her “extremely pretty hands, ornamented with very brilliant rings, folded in her lap...She was very quiet, she sat in a charming, tranquil attitude, but her lips and eyes were constantly moving” (8).

In the Joseph Conrad’s novel, Heart of Darkness, Marlow, the main character, shows his opinion of women in a well masked, descriptive manner. Although women are not given a large speaking role ,the readers still feel their presence throughout the novel. In the scene at the Central Station, the description of the symbols in the painting,the blindfold, the torch, and the darkness, allow the readers to see the darkness in the world and the thought that women should not be exposed to that darkness. Marlow believe that women are too fragile to know the truth and should instead be left in their beautiful, untouched world.

In the 1900s novella Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, the protagonist often encounters women at landmarks of his life. Charlie Marlow is a sailor and imperialist who sets out along the Congo River to “civilize” the “savages.” The novella begins with a crew on the Thames waiting for the tides to change. During their wait, a character named Marlow tells of his exploits on the African continent. In his recounted travels, Marlow meets other imperialists such as Mr. Kurtz, a man who is obsessed with the pursuit of ivory and riches. Like Mr. Kurtz, Marlow embarks across the African continent in hopes of earning both money and respect. One early critic of the novel, Edward Garnett, wrote in his review that “[Heart of Darkness] is simply a

For the most part people who read Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad may feel that the novella is strictly a story of exploration and racial discrimination. But to Johanna Smith who wrote “’Too Beautiful Altogether’: Ideologies of Gender and Empire in Heart of Darkness” it is much more than that. Johanna Smith along with Wallace Watson and Rita A. Bergenholtz agree that throughout Heart of Darkness there are tones of gender prejudice, but the way that these three different authors perceive and interpret those gender tones are to a certain extent different.

Beyond the shield of civilization and into the depths of a primitive, untamed frontier lies the true face of the human soul. It is in the midst of this savagery and unrelenting danger that mankind confronts the brooding nature of his inner self.  Joseph Conrad’s novel, Heart of Darkness, is the story of one man's insight into life as he embarks on a voyage to the edges of the world. Here, he meets the bitter, yet enlightening forces that eventually shape his outlook on life and his own individuality. Conrad’s portrayal of the characters, setting, and symbols, allow the reader to reflect on the true nature of man.

The constant change in scenery throughout the Heart of Darkness contributes heavily to the meaning of the novel as a whole, for it allows the novel’s author, Joseph Conrad, to expand on the effects the physical journey of travelling through the Congo has on the inner mentailites of the characters- Marlow and Kurtz- in the novel. Conrad’s continuous comparisons between characters, their surroundings, and the plot, create the genuine progression of the novel, while the physical journey that is taken allows the characters to make their own discovery of humankind. As Kurtz’s destiny and the struggles he overcomes go on to deeply affect the two characters’ journey through the story’s plot, as everything in the Heart of Darkness is linked or comes back to Kurtz and all the wrongful actions he has committed in the Congo- as he was the perpetrator of all the darkness in the novel to begin with.

Heart of Darkness is written by Joseph Conrad and published in 1899. It is a novella written in the early modernism literary period.