Stream of Consciousness – The African Mistress does have a voice, a hidden one.
“she stood looking at us without a stir” that’s what I believe he was saying about me…. without a stir indeed; how could I stir and I am standing in front of such hypocrite and sanctimonious Europeans who claim enlightenment in a time when they do not even refer to me as a human being of flesh and blood. No! I am not “like the wilderness itself”, I am only me…. like myself. I have needs - if you are interested enough to know. I physically feel the hunger and thirst, I emotionally need support, I spiritually do have my own sexual desires, and I want to be a mother eventually- but believe me, my motherhood (if I could ever experience it) is going to change a lot of things, I am going to teach my offspring to stand for their rights, to do what I have failed to do.
Many women are satisfied receiving compliments about their appearances. Well, not me – who could tell if I am even a woman? What defines womanhood in the first place? so you think I am happy being described as “savage and superb” or as “wild eyed and magnificent”? ah…. Magnificence, of course, a shallow reference of magnificence. They haven’t even looked into my inner magnificence. They do not have any single idea how similar I am to a shattered mirror. Speaking of mirrors, I think I have reached a point where when I stare into my reflection in the mirror, I don’t even realize this “savage” woman anymore. Whatever, who cares?
It is unfair, not only being a woman in a fully blinded patriarchal community, but also an inferior African, under the mercy of racist monstrous rulers. Yes! I have opened my bare arms, and yes I have thrown them above my head, but no! not because of my “uncontrollable desire to touch the sky”, but to forcefully put my thoughts back into my mind, to hinder myself from voicing them out- because I am aware that no one would understand, no one has ever did. I am unfortunately tortured one time by my surroundings and thousand times by my own inner self, by my own lost identity, and the gloomy haunting scattered thoughts that sew my day with my night and deprive my eyes of rest. I frequently think of myself as a Machiavellian person, Yet, whether it is a bad or a terrible trait, I do not have any other choice. Kurtz may be using me - there is no room for doubt that he is- but trust me, there is nothing to be done. It is either that I adapt, do what he wants, and survive, or rebel, object, and get executed…. unfair…. Definitely unfair. How dare he describe my intentions as “inscrutable”, what does he even know about me? Is a minute- staring at me- enough to judge who I am and what my purposes are? Unfair. He was attracted to the glamming, glittery “innumerable necklaces” and the “barbarous ornaments” that I was wearing, fie! Little did he know that what shines even better is my golden heart, the heart that neither him nor any of his like have.
YOU ARE READING
I am a human as well
Spiritualwhat if the African Mistress in Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" had a voice ? what if she had a name? and what if we could hear what she was thinking when she briefly appeared in the novel? here is a short suggested monologue, written in stream...
