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Heart of Darkness Women and Femininity Quotes Page 7
Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Paragraph)
"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." (3.73)
Marlow sees in the Intended parallels to Kurtz’s other lover, the warrior woman. Both of them are unable to let go of an imagined conception of their true love. They both want to believe that Kurtz reciprocated their love absolutely. It is interesting that they both want the same thing when they live in such different worlds.
[Marlow to the Intended]: "'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. (3.85-86)
To Marlow, the Intended’s delusion epitomizes women’s naiveté.
