Joseph Conrad’s 1899 novella, Heart of Darkness, follows the story of Charles Marlow, an English sailor, and his expedition on the Congo River. Along his journey, Marlow encounters Mr. Kurtz, a renowned ivory trader, and his two lovers: his betrothed in Europe — the “Intended” — and a native who lives with Kurtz in the Congo — implied to be his mistress. Each woman’s significance to the novella only lies in Kurtz’s control over them, reflective of the role women played during Conrad’s lifetime — the Victorian era, where women only got married and assisted their husbands. Conrad demonstrates the sexist perception of women through the objectifying word choice and imagery, which also glorifies white Victorian beauty standards and shows a racist view of black people. The diction Conrad uses whilst describing Kurtz’s lovers dehumanizes women, which reflects the prejudiced beliefs of the Victorian era.

Conrad demonstrates how Kurtz’s Intended is merely his possession through demeaning imagery and word choice to show his ownership over her. Conrad puts emphasis on the whiteness and lightness of Kurtz’s Intended, describing her as “This fair hair, this pale visage, this pure brow” (Conrad 92). In addition to using anaphora, the word “this” details her hair, visage, and brow, and makes the Intended seem like a work of art — one of Kurtz’s collections. Conrad compares her to a doll again when he writes that “she seemed ready to listen without a thought for herself,” (Conrad 90) implying that her head is empty like a doll’s. Marlow implies that he thinks Kurtz’s Intended trusts him naively “without mental reservation” (Conrad 90). Portraying her as gullible to the control of men perpetuates the sexist belief Marlow holds that women live in a separate reality from men. Conrad portrays women using debasing language to perpetuate sexist nineteenth-century views of women, where females were deemed both physically and mentally inferior to men.

Conrad dehumanizes the African mistress by using animalistic diction to compare the native mistress to animals. Marlow describes Kurtz’s mistress:, “Her face had a tragic and fierce aspect of wild sorrow and of dumb pain mingled with the fear of some struggling, half-shaped resolve” (Conrad 75). The adjectives “fierce” and “wild” describe animals, so the fact that Conrad uses this terminology to describe the mistress indicates to readers that she is the “wild” animal (Conrad 75). The “half-shaped resolve” of the mistress gives readers the imagery of a caged animal “struggling” to break free of control. However, throughout the entire novella, she doesn’t break free from the force of Kurtz, seemingly becoming tamed by him. This imagery of the African mistress trying to escape control encapsulates the struggle of women in the Victorian era, forced to bend to the will of men. Furthermore, Marlow depicts the African mistress as wearing “bizarre things, charms, gifts of witch-men, that hung about her, glittered and trembled at every step […] she was savage and superb, wild-eyed and magnificent” (Conrad 76). He disregards the mistress and ignores her — as a person — to describe her jewelry instead, which places the jewelry in more importance than the person herself. This dismissive nature towards black people in the Victorian era contrasts to Conrad’s glamorization of beauty standards of the time, where pale, white skin was glamorized — shown through his description of the Intended’s appearance, where he puts special emphasis on her light facial features. While Conrad does laud the mistress as “superb” and “magnificent,” he counters every compliment with a demeaning animalistic trait, invalidating his praise. Conrad uses descriptors such as “savage” and “wild-eyed,” to imply that the Congolese mistress lacks control over herself. His praise seems more similar to that of glamorizing a circus animal, but in human terminology, this type of praise mocks her. Conrad’s language whilst writing — or lack of writing — on the African mistress contrasts the way he goes in depth to the lightness of the European lady’s features. The unruly and degrading portrayals of the native mistress echoes the antique, imperialist views of black women, and their subsidiary status in the nineteenth-century Victorian society.

Conrad dehumanizes Kurtz’s Intended and his African mistress in two diverging yet disparaging ways: showcasing Kurtz’s Intended as her fiancé’s property, and describing the African mistress with animalistic diction, dominated by her lover, Kurtz. The simple fact that Conrad always refers to the labels of their roles in relation to Kurtz shows that the women have no outer significance to the novella other than that they are associated with Kurtz. Women exist in the novel to reinforce men’s superior position, anchoring the feeble ideals of women in the Victorian era. No matter Conrad’s intention, his nineteenth-century views of the world bleed into this book, whether it be sexism towards women, or racism towards people of color; and it shows through his use of degrading word choice and imagery.