"You forget, dear Charlie, that the laborer is worthy of his hire, ' she said, brightly. It's queer how out of touch with truth women are. They live in a world of their own, and there has never been anything like it, and never can be. It is too beautiful altogether, and if they were to set it up it would go to pieces before the first sunset. Some confounded fact we men have been living contentedly with ever since the day of creation would start up and knock the whole thing over."
"I laid the ghost of his gifts at last with a lie," he began, suddenly. "Girl! What? Did I mention a girl? Oh, she is out of it -completely. They- the women, I mean- are out of it- should be out of it. We must help them to stay in that beautiful world of their own, lest ours gets worse."
With that being said, readers can view Charlie's statement as sexist. "...out of touch with truth..." Conrad writes this in a piece that is about one man's story, his decisions as a man, and his feelings about everything going on around him. Therefore by allowing his main character to say this passage, it allows the reader to believe that the main character has no use for a woman's beautiful world, that apparently women live outside the realm of reality, a reality where only men live. Not only does Conrad narrate Charlie to say this once but then again in the second part of the story reiterating his feeling that women live in a world all of their own when he says "We must help them to stay in that beautiful world of their own, lest ours gets worse." Conrad's insinuation through Charlie that women could not manage the stresses of reality and therefore live only in a beautiful facade is the exact passage that feminism works to negate.
"In general, feminist literary criticism before the 1970s—in the first and second waves of feminism—was concerned with women's authorship and the representation of women's condition within the literature; including the depiction of fictional female characters." (Wikipedia)The benefits of looking at this passage through the feminism lens are that we can see how women were treated in the past and work to correct it for the future, as we are not just creatures of naive fantasies living in a realm that is not reality alongside our human counterparts.
The disadvantage would be the other side of the double-edged knife. While sexism is not right, we run the risk of losing chivalry to a notion that we of the female race, know is not true, but when we fight to change how men see us after seeing us for so long as helpless, it creates a backlash of inequality. Women know men need us to need them whether we really need them or not but did we/do we really need to scream inequality for all when not all feel the same way. Some women are proud to be of a beautifully naive mindset. Also, analysis of books can strip them of their chauvinistic ways only to put great literature under scrutiny for something that was a factual reality of the male thought processes of years past. Also picking apart an author's words, meaning, theme, etc. is an attempt to understand what the author meant when we all read things differently.
To psychoanalyze these connected passages under the psychoanalytical umbrella that says psychoanalysis of literature "can be the psychoanalysis of the author or of a particularly interesting character in a given work." (Wikipedia) leads us to question why Charlie thinks the way he thinks by way of Conrad's mind. We have to ask whether Conrad was simply describing how it was on that day in age or was that truly how he felt about life around him.
The advantages of looking at this passage through the psychoanalytical lens are that we can get a better picture as to why the story was written. What the significance is to have this story published and read by the masses. It allows us to look deep into the context of Charlie's words for the meaning of how he feels and why."The chief function of the psychoanalytic critic is to reveal the true content, and thus to explain the effect on the reader of a literary work by translating its manifest elements into the dormant, unconscious determents that make up their suppressed meaning." (Devardhi)
The disadvantages of looking at this passage through the lens are that we strip away the enjoyment of just reading the words and allowing ourselves to simply be engulfed by the author's characters, settings, tones, and themes. Sometimes picking something apart is helpful and other times it just takes away from the simplicity of reading for light-minded fun.
Works Cited:
My Discussion Responses:
Hi Amy,
- "Feminist Literary Criticism."Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 31 Mar. 2017. Web. 13 Apr. 2017.
- "Psychoanalytic Literary Criticism."Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 05 Apr. 2017. Web. 13 Apr.
- Devardhi, J. "Application of Freudian Concepts to the Explication of Literary Texts: A Case Study of Walt Whitman’s “The Sleepers”."African Research Review3.1 (2009): n. pag. Web. 13 Apr. 2017.
- Conrad, Joseph. "Heart of Darkness."Gutenburg.org. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Apr. 2017
My Discussion Responses:
Hi Amy,
Thank you for agreeing. However, despite my stated point of view above, I will now play devils advocate to my own words. As I am quirky like that. So from a feminist standpoint, yes, the passage is sexist and paints women in a less than flattering light intellectually speaking, but when you read the whole story and read the women symbolically then a whole new light is shed on Conrad's story.
The story is, while still in a somewhat sexist way, literally all about a man and his journey, though literature is full of these kinds of stories about women too, where the male roles of the story are symbolic of the woman's journey. Conrad seemingly, specifically, made only a select few things in this story feminine. Two of which were Kurtz women, which much like the whole stories paralleling good vs evil nature, Kurtz had one woman of bright lighted purity and one of savage intensity. The third would be the feminine-named vessel that carries Charlie along the river and deep within himself.
Though I completely stand behind what I wrote above, I felt I needed to further state my feelings on the book to clarify that I do understand the immense symbolic nature of this novella. I do agree that many literary pieces do take an extreme sexist approach in describing women within their stories, however, I believe the sexist parts of this story are to aid the symbolic nature of how Kurtz viewed the woman with regard to the standard views of women of this novellas time period. Charlie actually, in one respect feels women are better then men if you read into the words through a psychoanalytical lens that follows the thinking that by not wanting women to have their beautiful worlds tainted by the possibilities of a man's worse world he is helping to preserve woman's beauty. It's a double-edged knife, in stripping a woman of their ability to handle the nitty-gritty, he is allowing women to be in a category that doesn't need to be amongst the nitty-gritty, which men tend to think is complimentary while some women think it's insulting.
Perspective is always subjective to an individual's personal views on life. Open-mindedness allows for vast interpretations of all things tangible and non. That's the true beauty of life, to me of course.
I really enjoy exploring this with you too. Part of the reason why I wanted to go back for my masters was so that I could talk to intelligent people who enjoy using their brains as much as I do. So thank you!
I can't say I disagree at the moment with anything that you have stated or how you have stated it. In literature, I don't believe there is a right or wrong per-say because it is all subjective to how the reader wants to interpret the written piece. However, there is always the way that the author intended to write it but some authors don't always give up their intentions because they like hearing the debate. From the little bit I have read on Conrad I think he definitely intended his women to be symbolic statues that embodied that time period for exactly what they were supposed to stand for at that time period. While I think that this was a story specifically written by a man about a man's journey I don't think women mattered much more then they needed to matter which is why he left them symbolic and nameless, I can't say I haven't written a character as such because the character was important to the story but not enough to have a life, just a presence, and a purpose. However, in doing that, it does allow for many doors to open up with questions and possible reasonable answers as to why it was written that way.
I believe Conrad's women were symbolic of good and evil as he presented polar opposites and that due to the nature of the stories events and the relationship between Krutz and Charlie that surrounded them, I can see the women being a foreshadowing of those ominous events in a way that paralleled the actual voyage into the darkness that was central Africa where Charlie was faced with Krutz's darkness and finding his way out of it back to the beauty.
I really enjoyed reading your interpretations and having you read my thoughts as well. Thank you very much, Amy!!!
~Maria