Colonialism and gender in Heart of Darkness and Wide Sargasso Sea

Heart of Darkness and Wide Sargasso Sea

These two novels will be reviewed and critiqued within these three themes: from a feminist point-of-view; from the colonialism point-of-view; and paper will present postcolonial implications as well.

Heart of Darkness -- From a Feminist Perspective

Women do not appear often in this novel, and they don't have important roles to play in the novel either. And because of the way Conrad describes women has led some feminists and others to assert that Conrad was sexist and that his book is sexist. While not necessarily agreeing with that assessment, it is true that Conrad does seem to belittle women in the novel. At least, he uses narrative that makes them sound weak and easily duped.

For example, when Charlie Marlow, the protagonist (and Conrad's alter ego, one presumes), wants to get a captain's position on a river steamboat; he asked men he knew to help him get an appointment because "…I must get there by hook or by crook" (12). But the men "did nothing" so Marlow reached out to his aunt to get the appointment he wanted. He said, "Then -- would you believe it -- I tried the women. I, Charlie Marlow, set the women to work -- to get a job!"

He describes his aunt as "a dear enthusiastic soul" who said that his wish was "a glorious idea"; that word "glorious" was perhaps intentionally used by Conrad to indicate how naive his aunt was, because traveling up the Congo River doesn't sound at all like a "glorious" journey. She was "determined to make no end of fuss to get appointed skipper of a river steamboat," he wrote (12). The word "fuss" has a distinctive female tone to it; you don't hear of men making a "fuss" over helping someone out. In a few sentences Marlow shows his eagerness to go to Africa after another captain "had been killed in a scuffle with the natives"; so while a woman sees this opportunity as "glorious," Marlow is either a madman or a masochist because he can't wait to go where the previous captain was killed by natives.

His next encounter with females occurs when he goes to the company headquarters in Belgium; there are two women in the office as he enters, "…one fat and the other slim," and the slim one rose and walked toward him, continued knitting but did not look up -- she was like a "somnambulist" (a person walking in her sleep) -- and never spoke to Marlow but led him into a room. The description sounds like the woman was a robot or moving manikin. Her dress was "plain as an umbrella cover," which seems a literary put down. How drab and dull can a person get? The fat woman (with a wart on her nose) seemed "uncanny and fateful," and both women were "feverishly" knitting black wool, which almost seems too obvious to be foreshadowing of Marlow's upcoming trip to a place where black natives thrived. Once he was "far away" Marlow envisioned these two women as "guarding the door of Darkness" (15).

Another example of Conrad's seeming lack of respect for women was the way in which he built up Kurtz when he went to visit the "Intended" (Kurtz's fiance). Taking into account the fact that Kurtz had an African mistress that Conrad had described as "sensual and sexual flesh," the lies he told the Intended (who is described as a "devoted and chaste spirit") bespoke of his lack of respect for her. Naturally he wasn't going to tell the grieving woman the truth about Kurtz's bad moral behavior, and his cheating with an African woman who was just a sexual outlet for him. But he lied in order to give the Intended the best possible image to focus on during her mourning. He also lied so the reader could get the impression that without a man, a woman is lost. In their meeting, the Intended had "fair hair, a pale visage" and a "pure brow" that was enveloped by an "ashy halo from which the dark eyes looked out at me" (73).

Telling the Intended that her deceased lover was "a remarkable man," with "a noble heart" and "a goodness that shone in every act," was a whopper, but it aided her grieving. Because the picture of her grieving created an image of a sad person who was now but a shell of a woman whose life was without purpose.

Heart of Darkness -- Colonial Images

Conrad constantly presented images that were black and white, mostly black. Darkness of course symbolizes evil, the unknown, it conceals things that humans cannot and should not see, and it hides danger from the men on board the river boat. The white is also present in the form of ivory, which was one of the points of the colonialism in the Congo; white men wanted to exploit the black man. And while Europeans looked down at Africans as savages, it is apparent that white men too are quite capable of savagery, which was illustrated by Kurtz's placing human heads on poles surrounding his station house. The colonialists -- the white men -- push deep into the darkness of the jungle with their advanced technology (the river boat and guns) but the darkness is far too powerful and enveloping for them to survive as they wished to.

There are images presented which suggest that the colonialism had goodness as a motive (Kurtz believed the company stations should be "like a beacon on the road to better things," a place for "humanizing, improving, instructing") but those words seem like lip service because the real reason for England to be meddling in African cultures is profit and exploitation. A more accurate portrayal of what the English thought vis-a-vis colonizing Africa was spoken by Marlow's aunt: her nephew will surely help in "weaning those ignorant millions from their horrid ways." Marlow says taking things away "…from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much."

On page 69 Conrad writes (through his narrator) "…They grabbed what they could get…it was robbery with violence, aggravated murder on a great scale," and that pretty well sums up the way in which the British made their presence known in Africa.

Heart of Darkness -- Postcolonial Images

The most vicious postcolonial literary attack on Conrad's Heart of Darkness was launched by the well-known and prize-winning Nigerian author Chinua Achebe. The noted author called Conrad "a thoroughgoing racist" who has written a book that is "offensive and totally deplorable" (Clendinnen, 2007). But other writers and scholars have praised the Conrad novel because it did embrace the real harsh truth about colonialism and the greed that was shown by European people in order to exploit the ivory and the people there. Conrad's book noted the destruction that Europeans had visited upon the people and the jungle:

"I've seen the devil of violence, and the devil of greed, and the devil of hot desire; but by all the stars! These were strong, lusty, red-eyed devils that swayed and drove men -- men I tell you. But as I stood on this

hillside, I foresaw that in the blinding sunshine of that land I would become acquainted with a flabby, pretending, weak-eyed devil of a rapacious and pitiless folly. How insidious he could be, too, I was only to find out several months later and a thousand miles farther" (18).

Marlow was against colonialism perpetrated on Africa by Europeans and it is obvious that he is ashamed of what Kurtz does. He feels pity towards them, and it seems he is the only European in Africa who feels that way. He writes that while the African "groaned somewhere" the "indefatigable man with the moustaches" said, "Serve him right. Transgression -- punishment -- bang! That's the only say. This will prevent all conflagrations for the future" (30).

In hindsight, a reader can clearly see that the colonialism foisted upon the Africans was repugnant to Marlow. When Marlow sees the skulls of men that Kurtz put on poles around the hut, he was at first confused, but later, when he "…had suddenly a nearer view, and its first result was to make me throw my head back as if before a blow" (74).

Wide Sargasso Sea -- Colonial Perspectives

It should be understood that Jean Rhys identifies seamlessly with Antoinette because Rhys knows all about what it is like being Creole from Jamaica -- that is her personal legacy as well. Meanwhile, it should also be presented in this paper that the British colonized Jamaica from 1655 to about 1855, and during those two hundred years the British put aboriginal peoples into slavery and exploited the land for its wealth of resources. That is the background to this novel, and the concept of "Creole" (a person's heritage is like a split personality -- part white, part black), thanks to the dark exercise of power by the colonial intruders, plays an important part in the hegemonic situation on the island of Dominica.

To the native blacks in Jamaica, Creoles are "white cockroaches," and to the whites they are "white niggers," and colonization can be blamed for this unfortunate cultural conundrum. Thus, Antoinette and her mother are despised by the expatriate whites and loathed by the black servants. Caught in the middle of a racial catch-22 because of the socioeconomic changes that occurred following the end of slavery, Antoinette's life resembles the lives of those in Jamaica who were caught up in the mean currents of British dominance.

Wide Sargasso Sea -- Postcolonial Images

Postcolonial writing usually points to the historical details from the point-of-view of those that were colonized. The details in Rhys's book provide stark evidence of the hardships that a native people endure even after the colonizers have backed off or have been figuratively shoved over a cliff.

Colonized people don't suddenly have better lives just because slavery was banned, or because the colonizers have turned over the government to local leaders. The bitterness and lingering suspicions between people of different ethnicities is present in this book (as it was when Rhys was growing up) because of 200 years of oppression by the English. Within those different ethnicities Rhys uses characters' values and experiences to flush out the aftermath of colonialism. For example, Antoinette is disadvantaged in several ways, by her gender, her class, and her race, but unlike Rochester, who symbolizes the British attitudes, Antoinette is a child of nature.

Since her family is dysfunctional and she is a social cockroach, her connection is not with her family or with society, but with the land. "There was a smell of ferns and river water and I felt safe again," she said (p. 33). In fact the very first time that Rochester witnesses an Antoinette smile is when she is in the jungle, about to take a drink of pure mountain water from a cup made of a leaf. This is a beautiful scene and shows the huge chasm between the Rochester, symbolic of the colonizer (British whites) and the colonized (Antoinette, Creole). Rochester is not at all comfortable in nature, and feels out of place, while this is Antoinette's land. After all, the natural world is not aware of or touched by human suffering, but it is a place where suffering humans may go for a retreat from the stifling social climate that was caused (in large part) by two hundred years of British hegemony.

In the colonial world of Jamaica, the white man was socially and psychologically out of place. Hence, in the postcolonial world of Jamaica, the symbol of oppression -- in this case Rochester -- is still clearly out of place. Author Rhys uses color to establish this dramatic conflict symbolically. Antoinette admires and is drawn to colors, but Rochester is put off by the wildly vivid natural colors in Jamaica. On a journey to Granbois, Rochester notices "…too much blue, too much purple, too much green…the flowers too red, the mountains too high, the hills too near" (p. 70).

In conclusion, these two novels are very similar in that both have the British as colonizers, bringing pain and unwanted social changes to a country in the name of dominance and exploitation. Conrad and Rhys are noted for their brilliantly conceived narratives, but in these books they both relied on situations that they actually observed and lived first hand. In the Wide Sargasso Sea Antoinette didn't know how to read and write, she said, "Other things I know," and she certainly did know. She knew discrimination and isolation, and the images that Rhys presents to the reader bring out Antoinette's despair and trials in starkly real narrative.