Conradian East and Gender Dynamics: An Ecofeminist Reading of Conrad’s Almayer’s Folly

Abstract

The early writings of Conrad, especially his tales like Almayer’s Folly, significantly revolve around an exoticized eastern setting – primarily, the Malay Archipelago – where the interaction between native and foreign characters plays a commanding role. Framing the female characters with alluring, inferior, and oriental attributes, Conrad, wittingly or unwittingly, amalgamates and exoticizes nature and women of the East, depicting them as intertwined and subjugated “Other”. Whereas this paper acknowledges that the act of avoiding Eurocentric binaries on the part of a white writer almost succumbs to a failure, it also speculates Conrad’s conscious effort to disinherit the dominant orientalist zeitgeist. Deciphering the colonial biases that are imposed upon both Eastern women and nature, alongside the ambiguous position of Conrad as a writer, this paper intends to attempt an ecofeminist reading of Conrad’s debut novel, Almayer’s Folly. Through the lens of various strands of ecofeminist thought, this study will be able to add a set of new ideas to the ongoing discussions on gender, ecology, and colonial discourse in colonial literature.