Criticism > Short Story Criticism > Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad - Donald S. Wilson (essay date summer 2000)

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Donald S. Wilson (essay date summer 2000)

SOURCE: Wilson, Donald S. “The Beast in the Congo: How Victorian Homophobia Inflects Marlow's Heart of Darkness.” Conradiana: A Journal of Joseph Conrad Studies 32, no. 2 (summer 2000): 96-118.

[In the following essay, Wilson investigates elements of homophobia and homoeroticism in Heart of Darkness.]

Writing in 1899 about the serial publication of Heart of Darkness in Blackwood's Magazine, Joseph Conrad claimed: “One was in decent company there … and had a good sort of public. There isn't a single club and messroom and man-of-war in the British Seas and Dominions which hasn't got its copy of Maga.”¹ Evidently Conrad had written his novel exclusively for a male readership.² However, there were actually two male audiences present for Marlow's tale: Conrad's literal, predominantly male readership, and Marlow's “crowd of...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. J. Hillis Miller (essay date 1985)
   2. Michael Levenson (essay date 1988)
   3. Robert Hampson (essay date spring 1990)
   4. Rita Bode (essay date 1994)
   5. Kimberly J. Devlin (essay date winter 1994)
   6. Cedric Watts (essay date 1996)
   7. Carola M. Kaplan (essay date summer 1997)
   8. Ode S. Ogede (essay date 1999)
   9. Tony C. Brown (essay date spring 2000)
   10. Dorothy Trench-Bonett (essay date summer 2000)
   11. Donald S. Wilson (essay date summer 2000)
   12. Peter Edgerly Firchow (essay date 2000)
   13. Padmini Mongia (essay date summer 2001)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright

1. Joseph Conrad