From Incapable “Angel in the House” to Invincible “New Woman” in Marlovian Narratives: Representing Womanhood in “Heart of Darkness” and Chance

Abstract

WHEN ADDRESSING ISSUES of Modernist arts and literature in face of machismo aesthetics of male modernists, feminist critics choose to turn their attention to things associated with that have long been excluded or ignored by male critics (Felski 1995: 24). According to Rita Felski, modernity as concept denotes public sphere dominated by malecentered institutions, and enacts rigid hierarchical distinction between public sphere (masculinity) and private sphere (femininity), which distinguishes male mastery of experimental, self-conscious, and ironic aesthetic from female indulgence in seductive lures of emotion, desire, and body (24). To dismande phallogocentric fixity of gender hierarchy, Felski encourages revisionist readings of male modernist canon on part of feminist critics to cast new light on importance of female experiences as well as women's modernity (24). Inspired by my predecessors' efforts to illuminate images of feminine and to release voices of female characters repressed by traditional scholarship concerning modernist literary text, this paper will re-read Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (1899) and Chance (1914), focussing on different representations of womanhood filtered through eyes of serial male narrator Charlie Marlow. Motivated by feminist objective to restore importance of trivial, everyday, and mundane in experiences of women (Felski 1995: 28), I shall present critical perspective in which representation of women and feminine are fully explored and addressed, through lens of female sensibility and sensitivity as well. As Nadelhaft has put it, a feminist reading of Joseph Conrad is designed in large part to reclaim Conrad for women readers for whom he has been almost clandestine pleasure, in face of male critical hierarchy and feminist disapproval (1991: 1) so that pleasures for women readers of Conrad's works can be best enjoyed and savored from new critical perspective of feminism.Many critics of Chance have commented on complex discussions of gender at work in novel.1 By comparing representation of female protagonist in this novel with Conrad's earlier evocation of in Heart of Darkness, this essay explores development of Conrad's response to contemporary literary tropes from that of in House to New Woman. I shall argue that while belongs to category implied by Coventry Patmore's famous poem, Flora de Barrai in part sheds patriarchal assumptions of Victorian Angel and emerges with an identity more closely conforming to ideals of New Woman. Nevertheless, comparison of two female images proves that their construction goes beyond simplistic polar division of patriarchal passivity/feminist independence, which in turn demonstrates Conrad's insight into complexity as well as profundity of womanhood.The Construction of Intended as in House in Heart of Darkness2In her classic essay on mechanism of gender and imperialist ideologies operated in Heart of Darkness, Johanna Smith points out that Marlow's misogynistic vision of womanhood as an innocent and naive being - dubbed as angel in house - was shared by his Victorian contemporaries. The ideal Victorian woman is figure needing to be protected and enshrined within domestic sphere; outside world of imperialist adventures is harsh for her to survive and to understand. Smith spells out psychological mechanism for Victorian construction of separate spheres which underlies Marlow's discourse of womanhood. The ideology of separate spheres is constructed to strengthen workings of imperialism that is safely distanced from private sphere too beautiful altogether; in other words, the feminine sphere of 'idea' will prevent masculine sphere of Tact' from deteriorating (1996: 180). …