Conrad and Masculinity
Conrad and Masculinity
Conrad and Masculinity
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4<br />
Gender <strong>and</strong> the Disciplined Body:<br />
Nostromo<br />
In Nostromo <strong>Conrad</strong> deploys stereotypes of gender <strong>and</strong> race, which is<br />
not to say that he merely reproduces such stereotypes, since I shall<br />
argue that they form part of the novel’s critique of false consciousness,<br />
<strong>and</strong> its associated deconstruction of certain illusions of masculinity.<br />
These stereotypes involve both body <strong>and</strong> character, <strong>and</strong> imply their<br />
correspondence. It is a novel in which heroic male moustaches are<br />
much in evidence. Gould <strong>and</strong> Nostromo are characters that draw<br />
upon two stereotyped versions of normative masculinity, Anglo-<br />
Saxon <strong>and</strong> Latin. Gould is the ideal English gentleman colonial<br />
administrator: resolute, dignified, restrained, inscrutable, knowledgeable<br />
in the ways of his adopted country yet indelibly English (N,<br />
47–8). This crucial Englishness, which initially seems to hold him<br />
apart from what is seen as the mad farce of South American politics, is<br />
presented as a bodily characteristic:<br />
Born in the country [Sulaco] ... spare <strong>and</strong> tall, with a flaming moustache,<br />
a neat chin, clear blue eyes, auburn hair, <strong>and</strong> a thin, fresh,<br />
red face, Charles Gould looked like a new arrival ... He looked more<br />
English than ... anybody out of the hunting-field pictures in the<br />
numbers of Punch.<br />
(46–7)<br />
Gould even conforms to the ‘mad dogs <strong>and</strong> Englishman’ cliché, a fact<br />
recognized <strong>and</strong> gently mocked by Don José Avellanos: ‘Carlos, my<br />
friend, you have ridden from San Tomé in the heat of the day. Always<br />
the true English activity. No? What?’ (51). Nostromo is the ideal Latin<br />
heroic male adventurer of the people: strong, brave, resourceful, admired<br />
<strong>and</strong> vain, a casual <strong>and</strong> confident wooer, with his ‘unapproachable<br />
94