Imperial Leather and The Heart of Darkness show the views of race and gender, in very different ways.

In The Heart of Darkness, the author explores the issues surrounding imperialism, but he explains the issues in complicated ways. As Marlow is traveling up the river to the Inner Station he sees a sense of cruelty, and torture very close to slavery. Imperial Leather shows the complex relationships between race and sexuality, violence and gender, and imperial and anti-imperial power. Although both stories deal with race and gender, I feel that Imperial Leather talks about gender in much greater detail, and Heart of Darkness talks about race in much more detail. Starting with Heart of Darkness; it didnt take me very long to realize Conrad is a racist. His use of the N word, and the way he calls the people in Africa savages, makes it very clear how he feels about race. This is a story which racism presents itself very deliberately! Conrads terminology of people's skin tone really made me mad. Even with me being a Caucasian female, I was offended and shocked at his derogatory language. In Imperial Leather the issue of race is also brought up. "Racial stigmata were systematically, if often contradictorily, draw on to elaborate minute shadings of difference in which social hierarchies of race...White women were seen as an inherently degenerate "race" and black people to apes..." (McClintock, 54) Women do not play a big role in The Heart of Darkness. Throughout Marlow's voyage he encounters few women and he does not consider any of them to be equal to him. Because of his line of work (being a seaman) he does not encounter a lot of women, so maybe this is the reason he does not see them as equals. In Imperial Leather, McClintock says, "Women are the earth that is to be discovered, entered, names, inseminated and, above all, owned."(McClintock, 31) Meaning women are nothing more than property. Both authors addressed the issue of gender about equal in my opinion. Conrad did not consider women to be equal to himself, and McClintock knew that women were not considered equal. It is hard for me to imagine living in a world were race and gender is so relevant, where if you were not middle class and white you were considered a savage. Or if you were women, you were looked down on and considered only good for cleaning and reproducing. Its scary to think that our ancestors went through all these things. I did enjoy both books, and found them both interesting in different ways. Reading them both showed how different things are now when dealing with gender and race, as opposed to how they were in years past.