Conrad and Masculinity

148 Conrad and Masculinity
initially to search for Ziemianitch to aid Haldin’s escape) being
revealed. Somewhat later, as the oppression of his lonely situation
bears in on him, he becomes equally afraid of not being understood:
Yet he could not defend himself from fancying that Councillor
Mikulin was, perhaps, the only man in the world able to understand
his conduct. To be understood appeared extremely
fascinating.
(297)
At the same time he realizes the impossibility of understanding. This
is partly a political point, in that it is the context of suspicion and
political oppression that makes attempts at honest disclosure both
futile and dangerous. However, ultimately it is also a psychological
and even an existential point:
The idea of going back and, as he termed it to himself, confessing to
Councillor Mikulin flashed through his mind.
Go back! What for? Confess! To what? ‘I have been speaking to
him with the greatest openness,’ he said to himself with perfect
truth. ‘What else could I tell him? That I have undertaken to carry a
message to that brute Ziemianitch? Establish a false complicity and
destroy what chance of safety I have won for nothing—what folly!’
(297)
The existential implication here is that the truth of the self can never
be ultimately revealed. Razumov acted first to help Haldin and then to
betray him. Behind these actions is no ultimate truth of Razumov’s
identity but rather a contingent and circumstantial confusion. Since
Natalia Haldin, Sophia Antonovna and Tekla are, in their various
ways, presented as relatively admirable characters with firm convictions
and resolute in their behaviour, Conrad’s destabilizing of the self
bears most on the masculine self. It is the masculine self which both
needs and fears to confess, which both wants to be understood and yet
lacks the substance necessary for final understanding. The political
aspects have already been pointed out to Razumov by Mikulin, who
comments that ‘abstention, reserve, in certain situations, come very
near to political crime’ (294). This observation shows the insufficiency
of the language-teacher’s stereotypically ‘English’ code of masculinity
as reserve and restraint. Under certain forms of political oppression,
one must confess, and one cannot confess to innocence, only to guilt.