A Comparative narratological analysis of the representation of women in Homer’s the Odyssey and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of darkness

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2013

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Yıldırım, Tuğçe

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As Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness includes a lot of details about western colonialism in Africa, it is usually studied from a postcolonial perspective. In addition to showing the colonial activities and their effects, the novel also lays bare women’s marginalization in the western society. This thesis is a comparative narratological analysis of the representation of women in both Homer’s The Odyssey and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. There are many similarities between these two works in terms of “story,” “text,” and “narration”. In both of these texts, men are the protagonists but women are on the periphery of these men’s stories. In addition to this, while male protagonists go through different adventures, female characters stay still and they are located in their houses. The narrators also give limited information about female characters. However, unlike Homer, Conrad creates some ironic situations to criticize such hierarchical portrayals of women. He makes use of Homer’s ancient epic both in the construction of his plot and characterization to show the ongoing marginalization of women in patriarchal western societies.

Subject Keywords

Women in literature., Conrad, Joseph,

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http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12616317/index.pdf
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/23107

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Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis

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Citation Formats

T. Yıldırım, “A Comparative narratological analysis of the representation of women in Homer’s the Odyssey and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of darkness,” M.S. - Master of Science, Middle East Technical University, 2013.