Gender Issues in “Heart of Darkness”
Questions of the novella’s representation of women were forcefully raised by Nina Pelikan Strauss in “The Exclusion of the Intended from Secret Sharing in ‘Heart of Darkness,'”Novel, 20.2 (Winter 1987): 123-27. This powerful reading generated a new vein of critical inquiry that includes:
- Peter Hyland, ‘The Little Woman in “Heart of Darkness,”’ Conradiana, 20 (1988): 1-11.
- Joanna Smith, ‘“Too beautiful altogether”: Patriarchal Ideology in “Heart of Darkness”’ in Murfin, ed., A Case Study in Contemporary Criticism (1989), pp.179-95.
- Ruth Nadelhaft, Joseph Conrad (1991).
- Padmini Mongia, ‘Empire, Narrative and the Feminine in Lord Jim and Heart of Darkness’ in Carabine et al, eds., Contexts for Conrad (1993).
Some Web Links for “Heart of Darkness”
- Statement by Conrad on the Congo Free State (1903)
- Writing about “Heart of Darkness”
- American Museum Congo Expedition, 1909-15
- HMS Conway Site
- The Royal Museum for Central Africa
- The Initial Publication Context of “Heart of Darkness”
- Orson Welles’s Mercury Theatre Production of “Heart of Darkness”
“Heart of Darkness” Manuscript Online
Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library has digitized the surviving manuscript of the novella. Click on the link here and go to the Digital Images Online section of the menu.
“Heart of Darkness” Discussion
The following link is to an mp3 file with a 45- minute discussion of the novella by Lord Bragg with Dr Susan Jones, Professor Robert Hampson, and Dr Laurence Davies.
The discussion was broadcast on the BBC Radio 4 programme “Melyvn Bragg: In our Time” on 15 February 2007. RealPlayerAudio must be installed on your computer in order to access this discussion. Click here for the file: In Our Time