'Heart of Darkness' and late-Victorian fascination with the primitive and the double - novel by Joseph Conrad

Twentieth Century Literature, Spring, 1993 by Samir Elbarbary

One thinks of Jekyll's statement, "My devil had been long caged, he came out roaring. . . . As the first edge of my penitence wore off, the lower side of me . . . began to growl for license" (90-92). Lucy Westenra, an infectious prey to Dracula's bite, is a close manifestation of the possibility of conversion from goodness and purity to a female vampire:

The sweetness was turned to adamantine, heartless cruelty, and the purity to voluptuous wantonness. . . . The lips were crimson with fresh blood. . . . The stream had trickled over her chin and stained the purity of her lawn death-robe. . . . She flung to the ground, callous as a devil, the child that up to now she had clutched strenuously to her breast, growling over it as a dog growls over a bone. (203)

Kurtz possesses an immense charisma; he displays a mysterious hold on the natives. In the Russian's words, "They adored him. . . . He came to them with thunder and lightning." Although Kurtz harbors murderous thoughts about the Russian, the latter responds with further devotion: "He wanted to shoot me one day. . . . But I didn't clear out. No, no. I couldn't leave him" (57). Appropriately, "He had taken a high seat among the devils of the land" (50). The men-animals treat the dictatorial Moreau on terms not much different; he is deified and his power means mortal terror to others:

'His is the House of Pain.' 'His is the Hand that makes.' 'His is the Hand that wounds.' 'His is the Hand that heals.' (85)

Kurtz's humanity is visible only in expressions of self-disgust. When close to death he reflects, with a sense of loss, on his brutality. His words, "The horror! The horror!" show the Promethean shame that follows pride, and further constitute "a judgment upon the adventures of his soul on this earth" (71). It is both ironic and revealing that Kurtz dies at the moment of self-knowledge.

In the novels under discussion, persons have their echoes--a function of doubling, replication. Dracula is the signifier of insanity, which seems to have infected all male characters--a collective hysteria. It recurs in different degrees in the lunatic Redfield, who is confined to a mental asylum (111, 269), Jonathan Harker (96, 178), Arthur Godalming (199, 221), Dr. Seward (185), and even the learned Professor Van Helsing (187, 327). The helmsman's madness may be juxtaposed to Kurtz's--"He had no restraint, no restraint--just like Kurtz" (52)--and their deaths are somehow linked in our minds (47). Clues make it clear that early experiences that befall Fresleven, Marlow's predecessor, killed because of his insanity and destructiveness, parodically foretell Kurtz's own death. Moreau, like Fresleven, is killed in an agitated flurry of fury. Both are cruel, at a terrible cost to themselves. Montgomery is Moreau's metonymical associate. He is another case of atavistic regression. Prendick is not particularly distinct from these two; he has some of their savage nature. Remarkably enough, he undergoes a change on the island:

I too must have undergone strange changes. My clothes hung about me as yellow rags, through whose rents glowed the tanned skin. My hair grew long, and became matted together. I am told that even now my eyes have a strange brightness, a swift alertness of movement. (181)