Conrad and Masculinity

Epistemology, Modernity and Masculinity 125
is directed towards a group of male professionals, united by ‘the bond
of the sea’ (45) which makes them ‘tolerant of each other’s yarns—and
even convictions’ (46). This places the reader in the position of an
overhearer, and when Marlow says that ‘you fellows see more than I
could then’ (HOD, 83) this does not necessarily apply to the reader.
Are we to count ourselves one of these perceptive ‘fellows’? Such a
question clearly carries a different inflection for male and female
readers: it seems to exclude women readers, without necessarily
including all men readers. In Under Western Eyes, the language-teacher
tells us parts of Razumov’s story on the basis of the latter’s journal
(which was not, of course, written for his eyes) and expresses his
inability to comprehend aspects of the story. This again sets up a
dynamic of differential interpretative ability between reader and
homodiegetic narrator. Do we see more or less than the languageteacher,
or do we simply see differently? Keeping these points in
mind, I now turn to examine the processes by which knowledge circulates
in certain works of Conrad’s middle period and more especially
to reveal the gendered inflection of this process.
The epistemological structure of ‘Heart of Darkness’ involves a pair
of men (Marlow and Kurtz), a group of men (Marlow and his listeners
on board the Nellie) and a pair of women (the African woman at the
Inner Station and the ‘Intended’). The pair of men is the locus of the
discovery of a hidden truth; the pair of women represent the complementary
exclusion, necessary to maintain the men’s belief in the
secrecy and power of that truth; the group of men foregrounds the
problematics of interpretation but also the possibility of a wider circulation
of that truth among men. The two women, in different ways,
are excluded by the text from the subject-position of knowledge (that
of the knower) and are made into its object (that which is known).
The African woman might, it seems, possess secret knowledge (of
Kurtz and his ‘unspeakable rites’) (HOD, 118). However, she is
allowed no voice, but only the pseudo-eloquence of gestures which
allow the narrative voice of Marlow to assimilate her to the jungle.
The Intended does speak in the text, but is excluded from this supposedly
precious knowledge. At the point where it might be passed to her
(and thereby transformed or demystified), a rhetorical move by
Marlow bypasses her as the subject of knowledge and utterance and
reinstates her as the object of (his own) utterance and (his listeners’)
knowledge. There is some slippage in the roles occupied by the
women, but this slippage is between three roles, each of which is
conceived as the antithesis to the powerful, knowing, speaking male