ABSTRACT
This chapter examines that, Even if the sexism of Marlow and Kurtz is part of the 'horror' that Conrad intends to disclose. The feminist reader cannot but consider that the text is structured so that this horror though obviously revealed to male and female reader alike is deliberately hidden from Kurtz's Intended. But it is not only Conrad as artist towards which this investigation is aimed. It is also aimed at the mainstream critics whose own autobiographical resonances are hidden within supposedly objective commentary. Finally at those radical critics who insist on the infinitely regressing 'openness' of Heart of Darkness. What can be analyzed, however, is the effect of Conrad's words on various readers; and it is the contention of this essay that these words are understood differently by feminist readers and by mainstream male commentators. In terms of the autobiographical impulse which we have argued here to be an unexpungeable element in criticism.
