Luminaries in Shadows: Women in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness

Abstract

Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness is a popular modernist work which has often been implored for racist undercurrents. The characterisation of women in the novella remains frail and severely restricted. However, the seemingly mute and insignificant figures of the narrative are an ‘absent presence’ which shapes and directs Marlow’s spiritual quest into the “heart of darkness”. The novella is a text which captures the feminist ethos rising in the contemporary British society as an invisibly powerful undercurrent.