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Conrad's Savage Woman

Joseph Conrad

"Conrad's Savage Woman: From Colonialism To Gender" will be included in Beyond The Roots, the 14th volume of Conrad: Eastern And Western Perspectives.
 
The book will be published in 2005.
 
This paper, written in the Spring of 2001,  would not have been possible without the help of my advisor at UConn, Margaret Breen.

         A vivid presence in the reader's mind, Kurtz's African mistress seems to have no place at all in the narrative of "Heart of Darkness" (1889). The Intended, though out of the realm of truth, has at least some place in the story - albeit on its periphery - which is denied to her African counterpart. Why then is the African woman so strikingly presented - a vivid image Marlow recalls and presents to his male audience, a figure remembered in the presence of the Intended?  Speaking to an audience in the know, Marlow provides very little in the way of direct comment on colonialism. There is much that must be inferred. Still less is said of the African woman, of the effects on women, for instance - perhaps for the same reason.

        Padmini Mongia likens both "Heart of Darkness" and Lord Jim to adventure narratives in which women have no place or very insignificant and stereotypical roles. Indeed, Conrad himself saw "Heart of Darkness" as dealing with the civilizing mission in Africa, and thus as a narrative in which women would have no active role to play. Yet, surely a woman so strikingly present as Kurtz's mistress must have some role to play, albeit indirectly. It is in fact her presence that enables us to speak of her absence, that makes the point worth discussing, for her presence signals a more important absence, an absence that is vividly present.  In that sense, Kurtz's African mistress functions as a Freudian slip, slipping out of the Russian's mouth into the narrative. Forcing herself into our consciousness, she is the truth that arises out of the Id where it has lain long repressed - a truth that Marlow's narrative serves to reveal and yet in the nature of narratives manages to conceal. Her very presence reminds us of issues Marlow - and Conrad - do not deal with.

        Reconstructing the savage woman's person and role in the story will be as much a matter of scrutinizing what Marlow does not say as of examining the very little that he does say about her. Since Marlow leaves so much unsaid, I have resorted to other texts that offer a more direct commentary on the effects of colonialism on women.

        Strangely enough, Kurtz who speaks at length of "(my) Intended, my ivory, my station, my river, my..." (Heart of Darkness," YS 116) has nothing to say of the African woman who we are given to understand was an important part of his life. The last possessive pronoun in that list may well have been intended to refer to his mistress. But Kurtz breaks off at this point or, as is more likely, Marlow censors his remarks. When we do hear of her, it is through the Russian:
 
         She got in one day and kicked up a row about
         those  miserable rags I picked up in the store-
         room to mend my clothes with. At least it must
         have been that, for she talked like a fury to Kurtz
         for an hour pointing at me now and then...Luckily
         for me, I fancy Kurtz felt too ill that day to care,
         or there would have been mischief. (137)
 
         While the Russian's words affirm the savage woman's influence over Kurtz, the turn his anecdote takes, the moment it represents, negates any sense of influence. For we see the woman at a moment when Kurtz chooses for whatever reason to ignore her fury. This desire to negate her importance is reinforced by the Russian's mention of her only at this juncture when she threatens to enter both the ship and the narrative. Enthusing about Kurtz earlier, he had omitted to mention her. Nor does Marlow remark on the presence of a mistress, who, had she been white, would have served to question Kurtz's fidelity to his fiancée.
 
         Much to the Russian's relief, the savage woman does not enter the ship. Marlow is content to see her go, evincing as little curiosity in her as he does in the Intended's view of Kurtz. Both women might have helped to unfold other facets in the man Marlow so strenuously seeks to understand. Moreover, Marlow's sense of the African woman's dignity rests on her passivity and resignation. She is praised, as all women are, for occupying a position of disempowerment. Not only does she relinquish her claim on Kurtz, but she also resigns all claims to being part of an essentially Eurocentric narrative, as though her exclusion from such a narrative were natural.

        It was not uncommon for the European colonizer to take women from the colonized society to satisfy his sexual desire. Michelle Cliff in her novel Abeng (1984) tells us that in the days when "there were few white women on the island...the grandmothers of these people sitting in a church on a Sunday evening...had been violated again and again by the very men who whipped them" (19). Cliff's novel, with a protagonist of mixed parentage who struggles to reinscribe into the white identity her father forces on her a black heritage that despite her fair skin cannot be whited out, may be read as a response to such monolithic texts as "Heart of Darkness." William Savage in his construction of his daughter's identity enacts the same exclusionary process Marlow and the Russian do in their exclusion of the African mistress.
 
       That Marlow perceives the woman as being naturally no more than a thing Kurtz had ownership of is evident in the terms in which he conceives her, likening her to the spoil of the land. His first view of her tells us nothing about her except that she has "brass leggings to the knee" and "brass wire gauntlets to the elbow." "Innumerable necklaces," we are told, hang on her neck as do other charms. "She must have had the value of several elephant tusks on her," Marlow exclaims (YS 135).
 
        The persistent denial of this phenomenon of intercourse between the colonizer and the colonized (female) was as common as the phenomenon itself. In fact, in both works there is a need to deny the perspective of the colonized women. The descendants of the slaves in Cliff's novel are unaware of the fact as are presumably the white teachers who instruct them; and Justice Savage's descendants, while unable to deny many aspects of the Judge's behaviour, reassure each other that he did not impregnate any native women. In Marlow's case it is, perhaps, the relative insignificance of the woman that leaves these issues unaddressed. What Kurtz had done was, perhaps, so common and acceptable that it would have excited no comment. Yet Marlow repeatedly expresses disgust at Kurtz's lust, which probably includes Kurtz's relation with his mistress. It would seem then that Marlow deliberately avoids mention of the African woman. Marlow, who constructs from the little that he hears an entire character, who speculates on the nature of Kurtz and elsewhere on the nature of Jim, leaves us with only a visual impression of the savage woman.

        Marlow is equally vague about the meaning of "the horror." It may refer to Kurtz's greed for ivory or the means he uses to obtain it. The horror may also be that Kurtz becomes like the Africans, participating in what Marlow thinks of as their orgies, consenting to having rites consecrated to him. The focus remains on the corruption of Kurtz's soul and not on the effect this has on the Africans, his mistress, or the Intended.
 
        The ivory itself is not, as far as Marlow is concerned, disturbing. This, after all, is what the company trades in. The horror, therefore, does not refer to the trade in ivory. Marlow joins the company fully aware that it, as he informs his aunt, is run for profit. What disturbs Marlow is the method, or as he puts it to the manager, the lack of one. In Marlow's mind, Kurtz's lust for women and his lust for ivory are linked. Kurtz has, says Marlow, an "appetite" for ivory, and lacks "restraint in the gratification of his various lusts" (YS 131). What seems particularly repulsive to Marlow is that Kurtz should consort with the Africans, becoming one of them, for the sake of the ivory.
 
        There is a suggestion that Kurtz's route to the ivory is through his mistress whose favour in turn gains for him the confidence and devotion of the tribe. Yet the link between the ivory and the woman has in her case a reductive effect. Whether she is a sexual object for Kurtz or merely his link to the ivory, the African woman is exploited. But Marlow chooses not to recognize this, displacing Kurtz's lust onto the woman. Her influence and presence are perceived to be as corrupting as the ivory. Far from civilization, the jungle and its people, especially its women, become sources of temptation. The narrative and Marlow's imagination conveniently exclude the African woman and her feelings.
 
        Marlow is not only reluctant to consider the African woman's situation, but is anxious to absolve Kurtz of as much of the responsibility as possible. The connection between the Intended and Kurtz's mistress that Marlow is forced to acknowledge is to some extent responsible for Marlow's attitude; for they are connected not only as tragic figures who have lost the man they loved, but also as women Kurtz owns.
 
       It seems likely given Kurtz's nature that he would regard his mistress - if he did regard her at all - as he regarded everything else in his life: as a possession. Clearly Marlow sees her thus. Considering that the woman in question is African and that to use people in order to gain an object is the way of the world of trade, Marlow perhaps accepts, though he does not condone Kurtz's act. This would account for the lack of comment in her case. Yet when Kurtz refers to the Intended in this manner, Marlow is disgusted: "You should have heard the disinterred body of Mr. Kurtz saying, 'My Intended.'...everything belonged to him" (YS 115).

        The "horror" then is that Kurtz's attitude to his fiancée is no different from his attitude to his African mistress. Marlow is aware of this when at the conclusion he sees the Intended stretch forth her hands and is reminded of the African woman: "I shall see her too, a tragic and familiar Shade resembling in this gesture another one, tragic also and bedecked with powerless charms, stretching forth bare brown arms over the glitter of the infernal stream, the stream of darkness" (160); but is reluctant to admit it, for colonialism reveals the unsavoury aspects of male behaviour in the metropolis as well.
 
         Both the Intended and her African counterpart are "bedecked in powerless charms" (160): the one abandoned by Kurtz for his material interests, the other exploited for gain, powerless to prevent her own exploitation and that of the land. The saving grace for these women is their illusion that they are loved and that Kurtz is a worthy man. "I knew it - I was sure!" the Intended cries when Marlow tells her that Kurtz's last words were her name (YS 162). If the African woman and her tribe did indeed worship Kurtz, they must have thought him admirable. Both women can exist in the comfort of the knowledge that circumstances beyond their control and beyond his took Kurtz away from them. Neither is exposed to Emilia Gould's realization in Nostromo (1905) that for the man she loves, the lure of "material interests" has proven stronger than her love (N 522), just as the lure of romance, the status of the martyr or tragic hero is ultimately far more attractive to Jim in Lord Jim (1900) than Jewel can be.
 
       When Jewel complains that Jim was "like the others" (LJ 350), Marlow and Stein tell her that she did not understand him. Marlow's attitude to Jewel and to women such as the Intended is remarkably similar: both, in his view, are unable to comprehend the true nature of the men they love. If the Intended is out of it, it is also because she is hardly aware of the moral strength required in the circumstances in which Kurtz is placed. She perceives him alternated between admiration of the man and intense loathing of him, both positions would make the Intended's view repulsive, for in either case, the Intended sees not the man, but something that is not there. Kurtz fails in some way, and realizes that he fails. To express this is an act of courage, but very different from the kind of goodness and idealism that the Intended thinks he has exhibited, which free from temptation and struggle has no intrinsic merit. Such goodness can only originate in men who are singularly devoid of imagination. The Intended then does not credit Kurtz with any imagination and is herself lacking in that faculty. In any case, how well can a woman love a man, but not know him or hear instinctively his last words?

        In Marlow's moments of loathing, the Intended's or the Russians effusions about Kurtz would seem only the raving of people deluded by Kurtz's eloquence. It is impossible, she eagerly reiterates, to know him and not to "admire him" or to "love him" (YS 158). Yet the strength of her love, the force of her belief, is something she is to be admired for, and perhaps pitied for as well, for clearly she does not share Kurtz's confidences. Marlow's ambivalent views regarding the illusions women have or are fed is evident in the tone in which he remarks that they, the men, must enable women to "stay in that beautiful world of their own lest ours gets worse" (YS 115). Whether Marlow's remark stems from contempt or a form of Victorian chivalry that would shield women from everything unpleasant is a moot point, but in any case, both feelings arise from Marlow's sense of despair at the world they have created. In the colonized country the "idea" that redeems colonialism fades in the presence of the avariciousness that colonizers manifest.
 
        There is a sense in which women's illusions are essential to enable men to keep at bay the existence of their own "heart of darkness," where pursuing the logical threads of the colonialist discourse might reveal its inherent discrepancies and the horror that one thought oneself incapable of. The Intended performs a role similar to the one the accountant teaches a native woman to perform: that of helping the man maintain an illusion of efficiency through appearance; the attention paid to the accountant's clothing belying the actual inefficiency of the company (YS 68).
 
        Marlow's indictment like Conrad's comes several years after the event. When it is told, the details are so blurred and hazy that only those in the know would understand them. Marlow and the other men build a silent wall of collusion around themselves and their story. If Marlow's stories are like a glow that bring out a haze as the frame narrator suggests they do, then the haze is a blurring of detail, which is as suggestive of meaning as the glow may be. The unsaid and the absent form the core of the narrative (YS 48).
 
        Unlike Jim's story which Marlow pursues with eagerness, Kurtz's story is one to be buried in the deepest recesses of one's mind. Marlow who attempts to enlighten his aunt before his Congo experience finds himself on his return unable to communicate the truth to the Intended: "I could not tell her. It would have been too dark - too dark altogether..." (YS 162).
 
       Darkness here becomes not a sign of ignorance, but of knowledge. This inversion of terms begins with the map of Africa that Marlow gazed upon as a child in which blank spaces represented the unknown. As the continent comes to be known the blank spaces are filled in and get darkened. Marlow travels into this darkened space, already filled with facts, where imagination is of little use. As the room in which the interview between Marlow and the Intended takes place gets darker and darker, only the Intended's pale forehead remains "illuminated by the unextinguishable light of belief and love" (YS 158). As Marlow's story progresses, the day grows gradually darker, filled in by the light of Marlow's narrative, until right at the end, Marlow's audience gazes forth into a darkness.
 
        Dark as Africa, dark as the truth, Kurtz's savage mistress represents the truth Marlow speaks of. She remains a vivid presence in the mind of the reader and is obviously present in Marlow's mind, but is not allowed speech, and is prevented from gaining entry into the narrative. The Russian's relief is in part due to the fact that the African woman will bring her own version of the story to the fore and Marlow is, in this case, content not to pursue the truth. The African woman's presence embodies the dark stain of truth that remains, refusing to be erased. Women who in their person embody the truth are as much to be avoided as women who do not, for in their presence the mirror of illusion cracks and secrets which can be contained, which the narrative does contain, would spill out.

        Though the Intended and the African woman embody different concepts, illusion and truth, they are not really dissimilar, as Marlow realizes. It is important to recognize the similarities between them, for there are various superficial differences as well. After a period of colonization, the colonized society is as unaware of its history, the story of its trials and tribulations as are the people in the metropolis. Michelle Cliff remarks that in the days of slavery the men in their coffee houses who needed sugar for their coffee or rum to lace it with were hardly aware of who provided their comforts and how. That ignorance extends to the colonized society, for after a while it becomes essential to include them in the lie so that they may accept colonization. The value of the colonized lay in recognizing only as much as the colonizer needed them to recognize. The African woman and her tribe in venerating Kurtz as a god is in that state of requisite ignorance, though to the European her presence alone would indicate the monstrous truth. More monstrous than the crimes perpetrated against such people would be the realization of gender discrimination in the metropolis, which the crimes perpetrated against these people, especially against women, would reveal. Kurtz's attitude to the Intended and his mistress are a case in point. That the latter is valued for the ivory she can bring is a constant reminder that women in the colonized society too are valued not for themselves, but for what they bring. The striking similarity between the two women is suggestive of these other unspoken similarities.
 
       Critics such as Nina Pelikan Straus, though, have emphasized the dissimilarity between the two women. Marlow's description of them does on the face of it seem to corroborate the idea of the "soulless flesh" of the African woman and the "fleshless soul" of the Intended (127). The African woman "walk(s) with measured steps" while her European counterpart "float(s) towards (Marlow) in the dusk" (YS 157). Neither woman is fully described, though we do have a fuller picture of the African with all her ornaments, while of the Intended all we know is that she was in black. Supporting this idea is the fact that Kurtz's relationship with the Intended could not have included sexual intercourse whereas his relation with the African mistress would only have been on physical terms.
 
        Marlow's view of the two women as occupying the accepted role of legitimate fiancée and whore only heightens the apparent difference. In his construction of the two women, Marlow uses traditional concepts of Self and Other. Kurtz's African mistress is a flesh-and-blood woman; wild, barbaric, with a savage nobility and with human lusts, she is "nothing like the sun." The Intended, on the other hand, is civilized, gracious, cultured, with all the characteristics of the ideal woman who remains loyal to the man she loves and all that he stands for.
 
        These are the only two positions available to women, but only one of them is held out as acceptable. Marlow's description of the savage woman as a splendid specimen of womanhood recalls Rochester's description of Blanche Ingram and Bertha Mason. They are both "fine" women, "tall, dark, and majestic" (Bronte 335). Kurtz's African mistress shares Bertha's ferocity as well. She screams in fury at the Russian who is visibly terrified of the force of her fury and her ability and willingness to retaliate. Marlow like Rochester and other colonizers can admire the spirt and the figure of such women: when the pilgrims shoot at the tribe, only "the barbarous and superb woman (does) not so much as flinch..." (YS 146), but ultimately the illusions of women such as the Intended and their gentility are easier to bear.
 
        Marlow's pity for the Intended is, I suspect, not so much a sense of compassion for a woman whose fiancé's love for her is surpassed by his love for the ivory, as pity for a woman who becomes almost an embodiment of fidelity but does not realize that her loyalty is given to a man whose unrestrained lusts have led him to take a mistress.
 
        The mad woman in the attic not only comes from the colonized world, but serves to discourage her counterpart in the metropolis from ever imitating her. Construction of Self and Other not only served to preserve the difference between colonizer and colonized, but functioned, more importantly, as reinforcers of the traditional discourse on gender, propriety, and decorun that served to keep women in a position of powerlessness and disempowerment. Dissociating herself from the Other, the white woman would learn as Jane Eyre does to restrain and curb passions she would have been taught to perceive as unnatural. Rousseau, who proposes an education for Emile based on the idea of the noble savage, significantly enough insists that such an education is not meant for Sophie.
 
        The stereotypes that in the case of colonized people meant that they in effect became invisible would have reinforced and strengthened certain behaviours in the colonizers to assert the difference. Perceptions of women from the colonized world as sexually bold, savage, barbaric, and willing to break out in insurrection against injustice, would be seen as typical of an inferior race, reminding women such as the Intended that to be demure, passive, restrained, and resigned was to be superior. For women who were partially white, "madness" would stem as it does for Bertha Mason and for Jean Rhys's heroine from their black heritance.
 
        The use of colonialist discourse and its function within the metropolis is not overtly aknowledged in "Heart of Darkness," but the portrayal of two women in the standard mold calls up these associations. That it is not only a question of colour, but of gender is acknowledged in a visual image that draws into association the Intended and Kurtz's black mistress, and Marlow's awareness that both are equally powerless. Marlow does not pursue the idea. Michelle Cliff's Abeng contains a more explicit expression of this when Clare whose mother is coloured and whose father is "white" secretlt takes her grandfather's gun to shoot a hog, accidentally killing her grandmother's bull instead. Her father who mentally attributes her act to the "irresponsibility" that stems from her black genes, complains that Clare's act is incomprehensible for she has always "been so quiet, so girlish, so demure." To be "girlish" and "demure" is the prerogative of the white woman. This makes her superior to her black counterpart and reinforces gender stereotypes within the race-based hierarchy. Clare's fault lies not so much in killing the bull, as in attempting to enter a masculine preserve she is excluded from: "She had stepped out of line, no matter what, in a society in which the lines were unerringly drawn. She had been caught in rebellion. She was a girl. No one was impressed with her" (149). In the disapprobation she incurs, Clare's attempt to free herself from the traditional signifiers associated with women, only serves to bind her identity more closely to them.
 

William Dalrymple's work on Indo-European relations in India during the Raj bears out several of my conjectures about Kurtz and what constitutes the "horror."
 
Dalrymple's work White Mughals, describes factors who were so influenced by the culture they encountered in India, they adopted many of the cultural and religious practices of the Muslims and Hindus. Taking Indian wives was also a common practice.
 
Towards the end of the eighteenth century, increasing racialism meant that interracial relations were no longer viewed indulgently. (Could Kurtz have married the savage woman?) Adopting native dress and native practices was also condemned.
 
Like Kurtz, however, the most successful factors were the ones who tried to follow native customs and who conversed fluently in the Indian languages.

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