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Although Kurtz’s African mistress only appears in two brief scenes throughout the entire novella, her presence offers key insights into Kurtz’s imperialist fantasies and the objectifying nature of colonialism more broadly. Marlow first lays eyes on this woman when he arrives at the Inner Station, and he sees her again when he, with Kurtz in tow, sails away. Given that Conrad never gives her the chance to speak, the only view of her that the reader has access to is Marlow’s. His distinctly European perspective and role as an unreliable narrator inevitably disempower Kurtz’s African mistress, painting her as a hyper-sexualized object of desire. The exoticized way in which Marlow describes her, including words such as “wild,” “gorgeous,” “savage,” and “superb,” renders her a stereotypical seductress figure with an air of mystery about her.
Through this objectifying lens, Kurtz’s mistress begins to function as a symbol of Africa as a whole. Much like the land that the Europeans are set on conquering, Marlow, and presumably Kurtz, see her as an object full of wealth that is anyone’s for the taking. Marlow never explicitly describes the woman as Kurtz’s mistress, yet her continued presence around Kurtz and the abundance of glass beads and metals that she wears suggest that he has taken her as part of his own imperial conquest. If his mistress serves as a symbol of Africa under a European gaze, then his relationship with her allows him to feel even wealthier and more powerful. Conrad implies that Kurtz’s Intended lacks such influence, and while the women are different in many ways, Kurtz inevitably abandons them both. Neither the Intended’s blind faith nor the mistress’s alluring vitality are enough to save them from the consequences of Kurtz’s self-obsession. Marlow seems to imply that the pilgrims on his ship shot the African woman to death during their departure as she, unlike the rest of the Africans, refused to scramble for cover and continued reaching for Kurtz. The ambiguity in this moment, however, reinforces the notion that in a European worldview, she is a completely expendable character.
