Conrad and Masculinity

Masculinity, ‘Woman’ and Truth 159
are left wondering what Marlow’s secret might be, what sort of love
(or fear) might be keeping him away from the sea. His own desire for
Flora remains in evidence in the final scenes, a mediated desire for
which Powell provides vicarious fulfilment.
What Marlow is exploring, in a manner half-conscious and halfunconscious,
is not so much the nature of women as the nature and
psychological significance of his own ideas of the feminine. In returning
obsessively, during his narration, to his theories as to the nature
of women, Marlow is achieving two ends, both of which are matters
of oblique or covert self-examination. First, his assumed tone of
knowledgeableness about women and their ways, in contrast to
Captain Anthony’s idealism, little Fyne’s imperceptiveness and
Powell’s innocence, masks a profound identification with these other
men, in their shared lack of understanding and their shared inability
to engage with women other than through the distorting medium of
complementary sets of male idealizations and condemnations.
Whereas Straus identifies in ‘Heart of Darkness’ a shared, male secret
knowledge, I find in Chance a secret sharing of male ignorance, a
covert fellowship of fear and desire in relation to the feminine. The
anonymous frame-narrator plays an important role here. His presence
enlarges the potential field of male identification: Conrad, implied
author, frame-narrator, Marlow, Powell, Anthony, the (male) reader
(the question of gender-specific reading will be taken up again
shortly). The frame-narrator serves to distance and control Marlow
through his occasional mockery of Marlow’s portentous utterances.
He is in particular an object of Marlow’s defensive projections, in that
Marlow is continually attributing to him a dissent (on the subject of
women) that he rarely expresses. The following exchange occurs after
Marlow’s statement about female passivity which was quoted earlier:
‘Nothing can beat a true woman for a clear vision of reality; I would
say a cynical vision if I were not afraid of wounding your chivalrous
feelings—for which, by the by, women are not so grateful as you
may think, to fellows of your kind . . . .’
‘Upon my word, Marlow,’ I cried, ‘what are you flying out at me for
like this?’
(281)
Marlow’s pre-emptive attacks on the supposed views of the framenarrator
suggest that Marlow himself is uneasily aware of the
inadequacy and inconsistency of his own formulations, and that even