If Kurtz is the antithesis to Marlow, then Kurtz’s mistress can be read as the antithesis to Kurtz’s Intended; as vivid and vibrant as the Intended is pallid and despondent. I read Kurtz’s mistress as the very personification of Africa itself. An awed Marlow describes her as both “savage and superb”, “wild-eyed and magnificent”. Such a description is in keeping with Marlow’s tendency to both admire the African landscape and natives for their freeness and vitality (the African’s patently lack the traits of greed and hypocrisy that Marlow so despises in his fellow European colonisers), and to portray Africa as an esoteric, sagacious and mysterious entity. Marlow often implies that Africa – as an apparently dark, savage and primitive continent far removed from the bounds of ‘civilised’ Europe – appears to possess some essential knowledge of human darkness and desire that the white colonisers are incapable of truly understanding. This is reflected in his depiction of Kurtz’s mistress, who simultaneously embodies both Africa and the libidinal instincts and desires at the core of Kurtz’s psyche. Kurtz’s Intended, by contrast, represents the purportedly ‘civilised’ Kurtz – though as we know (and as is indicated by the gloom that surrounds the Intended at the conclusion of the novella), this part of Kurtz may be little more than an illusion. This likely explains why Marlow keeps envisaging Kurtz’s mistress during his discussion with the Intended; for Marlow, his memory of the ‘civilised’ Kurtz will forever be comingled with his knowledge of Kurtz’s capacity for darkness.
