17.11.2012 Views

Conrad and Masculinity

Conrad and Masculinity

Conrad and Masculinity

SHOW MORE
SHOW LESS

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.

136 <strong>Conrad</strong> <strong>and</strong> <strong>Masculinity</strong><br />

the Intended <strong>and</strong> his hinting at an undisclosed or unconscious reason<br />

for visiting her. Number 1 (‘I do not love him – I hate him’) has always<br />

been implicit in Marlow’s mixed attitude of fascination, admiration,<br />

fear <strong>and</strong> disgust towards Kurtz. Number 4 (‘I do not love him; I do not<br />

love anyone’) would illuminate Marlow’s continuing bachelor status,<br />

which becomes a theme <strong>and</strong> problem only in Chance. Most evident of<br />

all, however, is a fifth transformation which Sedgwick adds, observing<br />

that it is characteristic of Nietzsche <strong>and</strong> underlies Freud’s project so<br />

intimately that it does not occur to him to make it explicit: ‘I do not<br />

love him, I am him’ (EC, 162). Sedgwick’s perception that the emergence<br />

in the nineteenth century of a definition of the ‘homosexual’ in<br />

terms of sameness offered a way of concealing <strong>and</strong> expressing samesex<br />

desire through images of self love (EC, 160–1), opens the<br />

possibility of alternative interpretations of many of the pairs of male<br />

doubles that are found in <strong>Conrad</strong>’s work. In the case of ‘Heart of<br />

Darkness’, Marlow’s placing of the Intended as one of Kurtz’s possessions,<br />

comparable to the ivory in which he traded, is revealed as part<br />

of an economy of repressed same-sex desire, complicit with both the<br />

structures of patriarchy <strong>and</strong> with the economies of empire. This link<br />

is elucidated by Irigaray:<br />

The use of <strong>and</strong> traffic in women subtend <strong>and</strong> uphold the reign of<br />

masculine hom(m)o-sexuality, even while they maintain that<br />

hom(m)o-sexuality in speculations, mirror games, identifications,<br />

<strong>and</strong> more or less rivalrous appropriations, which defer its real practice<br />

... The exchange of women as goods accompanies <strong>and</strong><br />

stimulates exchanges of other ‘wealth’ among groups of men.<br />

(TS, 172) 26<br />

<strong>Conrad</strong>’s text continues this traffic on the level of epistemology, by<br />

offering to male readers a rich series of mirror games <strong>and</strong> identifications,<br />

involving the exchange of women as the objects of knowledge.<br />

‘Heart of Darkness’, then, suggests a possible symbolic structure or<br />

paradigm in which the key terms are: women, men, knowledge or<br />

truth, confession or revelation, lying or concealment. This structure<br />

can be found in many of <strong>Conrad</strong>’s works, although it is by no means<br />

invariable or omnipresent. The next chapter will consider some of the<br />

ways in which subsequent works of fiction by <strong>Conrad</strong> repeat this<br />

structure but in ways which are more critical, more inclined to question<br />

its validity.

Hooray! Your file is uploaded and ready to be published.

Saved successfully!

Ooh no, something went wrong!