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Conrad and Masculinity

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

initially to search for Ziemianitch to aid Haldin’s escape) being<br />

revealed. Somewhat later, as the oppression of his lonely situation<br />

bears in on him, he becomes equally afraid of not being understood:<br />

Yet he could not defend himself from fancying that Councillor<br />

Mikulin was, perhaps, the only man in the world able to underst<strong>and</strong><br />

his conduct. To be understood appeared extremely<br />

fascinating.<br />

(297)<br />

At the same time he realizes the impossibility of underst<strong>and</strong>ing. This<br />

is partly a political point, in that it is the context of suspicion <strong>and</strong><br />

political oppression that makes attempts at honest disclosure both<br />

futile <strong>and</strong> dangerous. However, ultimately it is also a psychological<br />

<strong>and</strong> even an existential point:<br />

The idea of going back <strong>and</strong>, as he termed it to himself, confessing to<br />

Councillor Mikulin flashed through his mind.<br />

Go back! What for? Confess! To what? ‘I have been speaking to<br />

him with the greatest openness,’ he said to himself with perfect<br />

truth. ‘What else could I tell him? That I have undertaken to carry a<br />

message to that brute Ziemianitch? Establish a false complicity <strong>and</strong><br />

destroy what chance of safety I have won for nothing—what folly!’<br />

(297)<br />

The existential implication here is that the truth of the self can never<br />

be ultimately revealed. Razumov acted first to help Haldin <strong>and</strong> then to<br />

betray him. Behind these actions is no ultimate truth of Razumov’s<br />

identity but rather a contingent <strong>and</strong> circumstantial confusion. Since<br />

Natalia Haldin, Sophia Antonovna <strong>and</strong> Tekla are, in their various<br />

ways, presented as relatively admirable characters with firm convictions<br />

<strong>and</strong> resolute in their behaviour, <strong>Conrad</strong>’s destabilizing of the self<br />

bears most on the masculine self. It is the masculine self which both<br />

needs <strong>and</strong> fears to confess, which both wants to be understood <strong>and</strong> yet<br />

lacks the substance necessary for final underst<strong>and</strong>ing. The political<br />

aspects have already been pointed out to Razumov by Mikulin, who<br />

comments that ‘abstention, reserve, in certain situations, come very<br />

near to political crime’ (294). This observation shows the insufficiency<br />

of the language-teacher’s stereotypically ‘English’ code of masculinity<br />

as reserve <strong>and</strong> restraint. Under certain forms of political oppression,<br />

one must confess, <strong>and</strong> one cannot confess to innocence, only to guilt.

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