Conrad and Masculinity

Epistemology, Modernity and Masculinity 129
Marlow’s patronizing attitude to women here has been extensively criticized.
19 What has been less noticed is the sheer incongruity of
Marlow’s description of the world inhabited by men. 20 We have
learned, quite rightly, to read ‘Heart of Darkness’ as a document of epistemological,
existential and ethical uncertainty, of dreams dreamt
alone, of truth and meaning which, if they can be found, can never be
conveyed. The pragmatism of Marlow the practical sailor, with his
belief in work, serves only to keep at bay, when necessary, Marlow the
spinner of spectral enigmas. Yet suddenly, in the face of his naively
idealistic aunt, Marlow sees himself as the contented inhabitant, with
other men, of a commonsense, positivistic world of ‘facts’. It would
seem that one purpose of women, for a man like Marlow, is to make his
own world seem epistemologically secure. This may motivate his decision
to protect the idealism of Kurtz’s ‘Intended’. Yet for Marlow the
latter also represents (but does not possess) a truth beyond mere ‘facts’.
Marlow’s account of his motives for visiting the Intended makes it
clear that he is not willing for her to occupy a subject position, either
of knowledge or of emotional possession, but wishes her to remain as
that which is known or possessed. Marlow conceives his activities
back in the ‘sepulchral city’ (152) as expressing his loyalty to Kurtz. He
feels that he has acquired from Kurtz a knowledge which makes him
contemptuous of the inhabitants of the city and he also has a number
of Kurtz’s possessions. He sets about a grudging distribution of these:
‘some family letters and memoranda’ (154) are given to a cousin,
while the report on the ‘Suppression of Savage Customs’, after being
offered to a company official, is passed to a journalist. Marlow
comments:
Thus I was left at last with a slim packet of letters and the girl’s
portrait ... I concluded I would go and give her back her portrait
and those letters myself.
(154–5)
This seems at first to be a continuation of the process of distributing
Kurtz’s possessions. Then, however, Marlow continues:
Curiosity? Yes; and also some other feeling perhaps. All that had
been Kurtz’s had passed out of my hands: his soul, his body, his
station, his plans, his ivory, his career. There remained only his
memory and his Intended—and I wanted to give that up, too, to
the past, in a way—to surrender personally all that remained of