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Originally Posted by
AuntShecky
Still, a glimmer of a slightly less pessimistic view of man can be gleaned from the concluding scene of Marlow’s narrative. This passage in which Marlow visits Kurtz’s mourning girlfriend is the scene which Oates cites as an example of Conrad’s misogyny, in that women are treated condescendingly, like children, in that they in every way the weaker
sex. Marlow, the man who thoroughly detests lying, assures her that Kurtz died with her name on her lips rather than his actual dying words–“The horror! The horror!” Rather than telling the woman the truth, he decides to spare her further grief. Readers can construe this scene as a revelation that Marlow is capable of performing an act of kindness; beneath his gruff exterior and rock-hard conviction of man’s essential corruption, he has a heart. In any event, only a man who has looked evil squarely in the face can know the meaning of redemption, eminently achievable through understanding and forgiveness.
You absolutely read that scene correctly; it's an act of kindness to spare her grief. Actually it's more than that as I'll explain in a second, but where is the misogyny? Misogyny is an act of hatred toward women, either contempt for their womanhood or a physical abuse. Joe Christmas from Faulkner's
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“They walked erect and slow, balancing small baskets full of earth on their heads, and the clink kept time with their footsteps. Black rags were wound round their loins, and the short ends waggled to and fro like tails. I could see every rib, the joints of their limbs were like knots in a rope; each had an iron collar on his neck, and all were connected together with a chain whose bights swung between them, rhythmically clinking. Another report from the cliff made me think suddenly of that ship of war I had seen firing into a continent. It was the same kind of ominous voice but these men could by no means of the imagination be called enemies. They were called criminals, and the outraged law, like the bursting shells, had come to them an insoluble mystery from the sea.”
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“My idea was to let that chain-gang get out of my sight before I climbed the hill. You know I am not particularly tender; I’ve had to strike and to fend off. I’ve had to resist and to attack sometimes–that’s the only way of resisting-without counting the exact cost, according to the demands of such sort of life as I had blundered into...I’ve seen the devil of violence, and the devil of greed, and the devil of hot desire; but, by all the stars! these were strong, lusty, red-eyed devils, that swayed and drove men–men I tell you. . . “
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“You know I hate, detest, and can’t bear a lie, not because I am straighter than the rest of us, but simply because it appalls me. There is a taint of death, a flavour of mortality in lies–-which is exactly what I hate and detest about the world–what I want to forget. It makes me miserable and sick, like biting something rotten would do.”
In the first quote, Marlow is describing a horrid scene of dehumanization. In the second quote he describes the roots of the human heart's darkness, not in specific terms but in abstract qualities of violence, greed, desire, lust. What connects the two is a first hand visual experience: "I could see every rib..." and "I've seen the devil..." Through his experience he's come to see the human heart's darkness, it's capacity for evil.
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"`We shall always remember him,' I said hastily.
"`No!' she cried. `It is impossible that all this should be lost-- that such a life should be sacrificed to leave nothing--but sorrow. You know what vast plans he had. I knew of them, too--I could not perhaps understand--but others knew of them. Something must remain. His words, at least, have not died.'
"`His words will remain,' I said.
"`And his example,' she whispered to herself. `Men looked up to him-- his goodness shone in every act. His example--'
"`True,' I said; `his example, too. Yes, his example. I forgot that.'
"But I do not. I cannot--I cannot believe--not yet. I cannot believe that I shall never see him again, that nobody will see him again, never, never, never.'
"She put out her arms as if after a retreating figure, stretching them back and with clasped pale hands across the fading and narrow sheen of the window. Never see him! I saw him clearly enough then. I shall see this eloquent phantom as long as I live, and I shall see her, too, a tragic and familiar Shade, resembling in this gesture another one, tragic also, and bedecked with powerless charms, stretching bare brown arms over the glitter of the infernal stream, the stream of darkness. She said suddenly very low, `He died as he lived.'
"`His end,' said I, with dull anger stirring in me, `was in every way worthy of his life.'
"`And I was not with him,' she murmured. My anger subsided before a feeling of infinite pity.
"`Everything that could be done--' I mumbled.
"`Ah, but I believed in him more than any one on earth--more than his own mother, more than--himself. He needed me! Me! I would have treasured every sigh, every word, every sign, every glance.'
"I felt like a chill grip on my chest. `Don't,' I said, in a muffled voice.
"`Forgive me. I--I have mourned so long in silence--in silence. . . . You were with him--to the last? I think of his loneliness. Nobody near to understand him as I would have understood. Perhaps no one to hear. . . .'
"`To the very end,' I said, shakily. `I heard his very last words. . . .' I stopped in a fright.
"`Repeat them,' she murmured in a heart-broken tone. `I want--I want--something--something--to--to live with.'
"I was on the point of crying at her, `Don't you hear them?' The dusk was repeating them in a persistent whisper all around us, in a whisper that seemed to swell menacingly like the first whisper of a rising wind. `The horror! The horror!'
"`His last word--to live with,' she insisted. `Don't you understand I loved him--I loved him--I loved him!'
"I pulled myself together and spoke slowly.
"`The last word he pronounced was--your name.'
"I heard a light sigh and then my heart stood still, stopped dead short by an exulting and terrible cry, by the cry of inconceivable triumph and of unspeakable pain. `I knew it--I was sure!' . . . She knew. She was sure. I heard her weeping; she had hidden her face in her hands. It seemed to me that the house would collapse before I could escape, that the heavens would fall upon my head. But nothing happened. The heavens do not fall for such a trifle. Would they have fallen, I wonder, if I had rendered Kurtz that justice which was his due? Hadn't he said he wanted only justice? But I couldn't. I could not tell her. It would have been too dark--too dark altogether. . . ."
There is a Victorian notion (perhaps it's rooted in western culture, but very prominent in Victorian times) that womanhood is a socializing force. Men go out and destroy themselves, fight wars, smash down castles, kill and steal, and tear down society, but women socialize, marry, have children, build families, nurture, inter stitch the fabric that makes up society. You see it in movie westerns, the woman that comes west to socialize the gunfighters. Kurt's beloved stands in for the great European civilization that is described at the beginning of the novel. Such a society has been built on keeping the darkness of the human heart out of sight. Notice how her connection to Kurtz is built on faith: "But I do not. I cannot--I cannot believe--not yet. I cannot believe that..." and ""`Ah, but I believed in him more than any one on earth--more than his own mother, more than--himself." That belief is the faith that preserves and builds society. It's the impulse that will build a family, and is emblematic for all that keeps the darkness of man's capability to dehumanize out of sight. The lie preserves society. That young sailor is shaken by Marlow's story because he's been given a vision of this horror, a horror that Marlow refuses to pass on to the woman. "It would have been too dark--too dark altogether." He keeps the chain gang out of sight from Kutz's beloved. As Eliot says in The Four Quartets, "“Humankind cannot bear very much reality.” 