Heart of Darkness

"Primitivism and The African Woman in Heart of Darkness" pg. 396

- Kurtz has mated with the magnificent black woman, violating British social standards
- Marlow conceives her as a substitute for Kurtz's white "Intended"
- the heads that adorn Kurtz's abode connect the primitivity of Africa with the primitive societies of Scotland (Macbeth time) and England
- Head-hunting practices in primitive societies had specific purposes and goals: "absorption of a slain enemy's courage and power"
- Expressions of virility and masculinity
- Kurtz collected heads to act out a Western fantasy of savagery
- Acephale (European writings) explores the metaphor of headlessness: emblem shows a naked man, headless, with a death's-head in place of where the penis should be, de-emphasizing the European preoccupation with the mind and rationality, and symbolizing a more primitive-driven masculinity, one that is not driven by the mind
- men's need to maintain masculinity through saparation, difference, and control -- seen in Kurtz: isolated from other Europeans, complete control over the Africans
- The Africans and Africa have become a "stage" for Kurtz to play out his fantasies, representing masculinity in his culture's view, borrowing rituals practiced by certain African groups, but "perverting" them to "Western ends"
- primitive Africa contrasts with civilized Europe: "emptiness of modern European life"
The Woman
- prejudiced language: sorrow = "wild"; pain = "dumb"; her resolve = "half-shaped"; her purpose = "inscrutible," she is "fecund and mysterious" "tenebrous and passionate," (like the landscape); "fool nigger" "insolent black head"
- woman = embodiment of Africa, African landscape; African landscape = death, the "white man's grave"