Conrad’s early sea adventure experiences give the inspiration in his latter works. He is the one who is capable of searching questions at other traditional hierarchical principles which are dominated by patriarchal ideology.

Furthermore, some women characters in his works exist only fitfully and simply such as in Heart of Darkness. But the author adopts some redemptive methods to make the absence of women character vividly and lively. Thus, this novel is the representative of anti-feminist novels.

II.A Survey of Joseph Conrad and Heart of Darkness in the Light of Feminism Criticism

2.1 Joseph Conrad in the Light of Feminist Criticism

After the publication of Heart of Darkness, there has been a violent controversy in the society about the “women question” in the society that wasn’t politically stable for women in 1880 in Britain. In the previous two decades, women had more opportunity to receive education and join in work. Cambridge and Oxford began to admit women in 1880. In addition, the working-class women and the middle class women had increased in employment in those decades. Moreover, women woke up to protect themselves by taking part in such groups which as the Fabian Society to have more social rights and suffrage. During the entire second half of the nineteenth century, both Britain and the United States started the battle for suffrage. Finally, women had the rights to vote officially in Britain in 1918, and the United States had been passed the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. With the development of women’s liberation movement, the society had taken a definite shape and offered more and more suffrage and property rights for women. In addition, more and more flourishing women literatures as well as prosperous colonialist literatures enriched the literary world of the Great Britain at the turn of the century. Therefore, there were a great number of female writers and even some male writers to write such books which encouraged women to fight for themselves at that time.

Joseph Conrad is a typical one of the feminist women writers. In his novel, he writes and creates many steadfast and preserving characters of women with deep impression, which including Elilia Gould and so on. With the respect to his analysis of literary values, including colonialism and imperialism, and his marginal position, we can have a better understanding to Conrad’s attitude to women.

Due to the early deaths of his parents, Conrad had started his life as a sailor at his twenties. Fortunately for him, this sea adventure experience became a significant source material of literature and art. He became more and more proficient in writing skills so that he understood the western culture deeply and finally discovered the ruthless imperialism’s intentions and the colonialism’s motives. Cedric Watts approved Conrad’s daring to question about the imperial ethos, which is too few in the late nineteenth century. Indeed, Conrad has the courage to use the feminism to search question at the traditional patriarchal ideology. Due to the bitterness facing the marginality, Conrad clearly focuses on women and other marginal groups. Through describing women characters, he puts his criticism about the unequal political and social orders of the western culture into his works.

During the late Victorian and Edwardian periods, women were fighting for their own social and political rights in the society from 1880 to 1920. In 1910, Conrad sent a formal letter which signed about advocating votes for women to Herbet asquith, the prime Minister at that time. Many books marked the women movement and  regarded it as the first wave of the women movement. So we can see that the first wave of women movement has an important effect on Conrad’s writing.

Even though women characters of Conrad’s books described very little  and briefly, he has an alternative way to compensate the shortage for the absence of vivid women images. Take the Heart of Darkness for an example, we can through the male narrator Marlow’s attitude towards the women characters see that women have their own strength and are better than men to some degree. Therefore, Heart of Darkness is a real feminist novel in a way.