Conrad and Masculinity

Gender and the Disciplined Body 95
style’ of dress (125). These two men are matched by female stereotypes.
Mrs Gould, who, ‘with her little head and shining coils of hair,
sitting in a cloud of muslin and lace ... resembled a fairy’ (52),
dispenses ‘the small graces of existence ... with simplicity and charm’,
being ‘highly gifted in the art of human intercourse which consists in
delicate shades of self-forgetfulness and in the suggestion of universal
comprehension’ (46). A late incarnation of the Victorian ‘Angel in the
House’, Mrs Gould mitigates somewhat but also facilitates her
husband’s essentially ruthless political manoeuvrings and economic
ambitions. The objects of Nostromo’s romantic attentions include ‘the
Morenita’ and Giselle Viola. The former, whether passionate, pouting,
angry or tearful, is essentially an amalgam of some clichés of Latin sex
appeal:
Her arms and neck emerged plump and bare from a snowy
chemisette; the blue woollen skirt, with all the fullness gathered in
front, scanty on the hips and tight across the back, disclosed the
provoking action of her walk. She came straight on and laid her
hand on the mare’s neck with a timid, coquettish look upwards out
of the corner of her eyes.
(127) 1
Giselle is a mere ‘girlish figure’ (546), ‘beautiful’ but ‘incapable of
sustained emotion’ (547).
This sort of characterization has obvious limitations – notably in
respect of the female characters – and Nostromo, while an interesting
exemplum of the fate of a certain sort of masculinity, is not generally
felt to be an interesting character, in the sense of having any complex
inner life. This view was shared by Conrad, who wrote in a letter:
But truly N[ostromo] is nothing at all—a fiction—embodied vanity
of the sailor kind—a romantic mouthpiece of ‘the people’ which (I
mean ‘the people’) frequently experience the very feelings to which
he gives utterance. I do not defend him as a creation. 2
Clearly these stereotypes are used knowingly by Conrad and, to
varying degrees, with what seems a critical intent. Conrad obviously
intended Nostromo as a semi-allegorical figure, though his claim that
Nostromo gives utterance to the feelings of the people shows a blindness
to the markedly masculine nature of Nostromo’s feelings (or an
assumption that women are not significant). Similarly, it is apparent