In the 1899 novella Heart of Darkness, set in colonial era Congo, author Joseph Conrad’s native mistress character is exoticized, portrayed as sexual and untamed. Indeed, “she was savage and superb, wild-eyed and magnificent.” Her very status as the character Kurtz’s mistress relegates her to a position that is immediately deviant from what is considered, in all traditional senses, honourable and virtuous. This is especially highlighted when brought into comparison with Kurtz’s Intended, whose depicted devotion and naivete becomes representative of purity, a wild contrast to the portrayal of the “savage” Mistress. In Conrad’s tale, the native mistress is the Other, fetishized for her supposed exoticism. She is reduced and dehumanised, likened to a primitive sexuality and another tool to be used by Conrad’s white male characters, nonexistent outside of her role to service Kurtz’s power.
The concept of “Otherness” in Western literature stems from deeply ingrained norms of prejudice and discrimination often on the basis of race, culture, and class. Historically, power dynamics favouring the white upper-classes ensured that those who did not meet a certain standard were treated as Others. This treatment is rooted in long standing Western histories of colonialism, imperialism, and exploitation, creating a chasmic and well-entrenched societal divide between the powerful and the Other. As exemplified in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, the Other, in the Western world, is dehumanised—thus becoming a symbol subject to romanticism and fetishization. Themes of Otherness and exoticism find themselves to be especially prevalent under the white male authorship of the Western literary canon, as the prejudiced beliefs and attitudes of upper classes become reflected in classic literature. But as we move into the 21st century and onwards, literature grows increasingly more diverse and depictive of various voices and demographics, as readers eagerly follow the evolution of authentic representation in contemporary literature.
Amongst contemporary authors, there have been large strides in the evolution of the trope of the Other, with efforts made through movements such as postcolonial literature and the increasing representation of authors from marginalised backgrounds in the global literary scene. For example, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s short story A Private Experience revolves around the interactions shared between Chika and a woman she meets during riots in Kano, Nigeria. Chika is Igbo, Christian and rich while the unnamed woman is Hausa, Muslim, and poor. The pair are ethnically, religiously, and socio-economically different from each other. This is further emphasised by the other woman’s lack of a name, a deliberate choice to emphasise unfamiliarity and foreignness. They are each other’s “Others,” finding themselves demographically at odds yet sharing the same common struggle of hiding amongst a violent outbreak of riots. Adichie utilises the trope of the Other to explore the possibilities of human connection between vastly different groups of people. In the hands of contemporary Nigerian author Adichie, the trope of the Other is used, not to alienate and exoticize groups of people, but to investigate the complexities and impacts of socio-cultural differences. In A Private Experience, the two women overcome each other’s foreign Otherness to form a greater human connection through shared vulnerabilities and struggles, highlighting how initial prejudices and biases can be overcome to transcend social and cultural boundaries, and in doing so, understanding grows, breeding compassion between various walks of life.
The trope of the Other has evolved over the centuries, growing from its use as a tool to perpetuate social and cultural prejudices amongst upper classes to a device used to explore shared empathy and vulnerability amongst those of different social and cultural backgrounds in divided societies. The trope of the Other is hopeful in a contemporary and vivid literary landscape.
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