A Black Athena in the Heart of Darkness, or Conrad’s Baffling Oxymorons

Joseph Conrad has been widely criticized for his portrait of the African woman who appears toward the end of his African novella. Most commentators consider her exclusively as the embodiment of the savagery inherent in the continent, and thence they pronounce an aggrieved or enraged condemnation of the novelist for having written such a Eurocentric and misogynistic portrait. Undoubtedly many of his feminine portraits, in particular of “native” or “mixed-race” women, are open to criticism. Our general contention, however, is that the case in point is different, and we will consequently often have to run counter to current generalizations about the character. For instance, in most accounts of the novella, the African woman has become Kurtz’s mistress, although the word never appears in the text. This status, considering the conditions then prevailing and the clichés circulating at the time, may well be what Conrad had in mind. But precisely, it is significant that he should have refrained from writing the word, as if perhaps he did not want to evoke the stereotype. Thus, the African woman does not explicitly figure on the famous list of Kurtz’s possessions: “My Intended, my ivory, my station, my river, my—,” nor in Marlow’s echo of it (Heart 116, 147). In a very perceptive article, Gabrielle MacIntire observes that in Heart of Darkness women have no names, being reduced to the status of men’s appendages, or, as one might say, to mere possessive cases: Marlow’s aunt, Kurtz’s Intended, the company’s two women, the accountant’s laundress.1 But MacIntire neglects to point out that the expected phrase, Kurtz’s mistress, is never to be found.2