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"A World of Their Own": Subversion of Gender Expectations in Conrad's Plays.(Critical Essay)

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From: Papers on Language & Literature
Date: 20010101
Author:WHEATLEY, ALISON E.

Bessie Carvil [is] absolutely the first conscious woman-creation in the whole body of my work.

-Joseph Conrad, Letter to J. B. Pinker

Joseph Conrad does not have a reputation as either a playwright or a writer primarily concerned with women or female roles, but the three plays he wrote challenge those assumptions. Much of his fiction depicts men in psychological and heroic dilemmas, with women relegated primarily to supporting or pedestal positions. The sole exception is Kurtz's African woman in the 1899 Heart of Darkness, who, alone, as if on a stage with an all-male ...

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