Search of the Lost Body in Things Fall Apart and Heart of Darkness: Genders in Conflict

Abstract

An awareness of gender is important when approaching post colonial texts such as Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe and Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, because women undergo experiences very differently from colonial and post colonial world. The experience of women within empire was often one of double oppressions. Whereas colonized men had to be subservient to their colonial masters, colonized women often had to be subservient to both their colonial masters and to the patriarchal nature of their own societies. For the most part, empire itself was strongly patriarchal, so that women from both colonizing and the colonized groups were marginalized and controlled. However, when approaching post colonial writing it should be kept in mind how different the portrayal of women in different regions, discourses, symbols from different classes and at different times can be. This diversity is important as it emphasizes the distinctive and the individual nature of women's experiences. In this paper we wanted to show that always women are the lost bodies in the conflicts of gender.