Conrad and Masculinity

144 Conrad and Masculinity
The male-homosocial structure whereby men’s ‘heterosexual
desire’ for women serves as a more or less perfunctory detour on the
way to a closer, but homophobically proscribed, bonding with
another man. 11
In a relationship established between (at least) two men, the ignorant
young woman is the mediation prescribed by society.
(TS, 199)
A possible confusion arising from different terminology needs to be
sorted out. Girard, who does not consider issues of gender and
assumes a symmetry in the erotic triangle, unaffected by the gender of
those involved, uses the term ‘mediator’ for the role model/rival
(person A) who prompts in another (person B) a shared desire for the
object (person C). 12 For Rubin, Sedgwick and Irigaray, A and B are
characteristically men, while C is characteristically a woman. Where
Girard refers to A (the rival) as the ‘mediator’, Irigaray refers to C (the
woman as avowed object of desire) as the prescribed ‘mediation’
between men. Girard and Irigaray are thus using the term ‘mediate’ in
different ways.
Natalia Haldin is indeed ‘transacted’ between her brother Victor and
Razumov. Having already explained that he chose Razumov to turn to
because the latter has no family who might be put at risk (UWE, 19),
Haldin evokes the idea of patriarchal inheritance, in which a woman
serves to continue the male line of succession, which ‘passes through’
her body without ever alighting on her:
‘Yes. Men like me leave no posterity,’ he repeated in a subdued
tone. ‘I have a sister though. She’s with my old mother—I
persuaded them to go abroad this year—thank God. Not a bad little
girl my sister. She has the most trustful eyes of any human being
that ever walked this earth. She will marry well, I hope. She may
have children—sons perhaps. Look at me. My father was a
Government official in the provinces.’
(22–3)
It is this speech that Razumov recalls, in the confession to Natalia
quoted above, as the starting point of his own desire for her (before he
has even met her). Thus Haldin’s (unconscious?) incitement of
Razumov’s desire accords with Girard’s idea of the rival who, possessing/desiring
the object, incites desire in another. Haldin does not