Conrad and Masculinity

156 Conrad and Masculinity
whom both Powell and Marlow find very attractive. Marlow, while
acknowledging Powell’s voyeuristic priority (‘who had looked on’),
claims for himself, using diction appropriate to male sexual fantasy, a
superior power of penetrating the inwardness of events. But the main
point here is that, despite the egregiously male nature of the rhetoric
of penetration which Marlow uses, his ‘clear vision’ of events is based
on the passive waiting that he identifies as female. It is true that
Marlow does play a part in the action of the main story in that he
encourages Fyne to go along with his wife’s wishes and to interfere in
the relationship between Anthony and Flora. But even this element of
action on Marlow’s part accords well with his own description of the
woman’s role:
In this world as at present organized women are the suspected half
of the population . . . The part falling to women’s share being all
‘influence’ has an air of occult and mysterious action, something
not altogether trustworthy like all natural forces.
(327)
Marlow’s influence on Fyne, who quite commendably is unwilling to
‘push under the head of a poor devil of a girl quite sufficiently plucky’
(190), is indeed suspect. Marlow’s confident assertion that Fyne might
as well humour his wife, by seeking to intervene between Flora and
Captain Anthony, since it will be ‘not the slightest use’ (191) turns out
to be quite wrong. Fyne’s interference, effectively engineered by
Marlow and Mrs Fyne, the misogynist and the feminist (though for
quite different motives), has a disastrous effect on the Anthonys’
marriage. Marlow conveniently forgets the part played in this disaster
by his own supposed perceptiveness when he subsequently seems to
blame a combination of chance and feminism. Marlow’s role in the
events of the novel closely resembles that which he seeks to attribute
to women: overt passivity combined with covert influence. My object
in pointing this out is not to use Marlow’s definitions of femininity,
which are in any event inconsistent and largely specious, to define
him as somehow ‘feminine’, but to consider the narrative significance
of the process by which he constantly sets up gender-based distinctions
that undo themselves.
Marlow also identifies ‘female’ traits in other male characters. In
relation to Captain Anthony in particular, Marlow expresses both fear
and contempt of the passive. To Mrs Fyne he says, of her brother: