Conrad and Masculinity
Conrad and Masculinity
Conrad and Masculinity
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7<br />
Vision, Power <strong>and</strong> Homosocial<br />
Exchange: The Arrow of Gold<br />
In examining the interaction of gender with colonialist ideologies of<br />
race in <strong>Conrad</strong>’s early work, Chapters 1 <strong>and</strong> 2 noted a number of<br />
examples of the articulation of power relations through visual<br />
exchanges between characters. Eyes, looking, appearance <strong>and</strong> other<br />
aspects of the visual remain significant elements in <strong>Conrad</strong>’s characterization<br />
<strong>and</strong> symbolic patterns of meaning throughout his career. 1<br />
However, in <strong>Conrad</strong>’s late novels the visual again assumes particular<br />
importance in relation to gender. The early novels <strong>and</strong> stories set in<br />
the Far East share a number of features with late work such as Victory,<br />
Chance <strong>and</strong> The Arrow of Gold: an ambivalent relationship to popular<br />
genres such as adventure <strong>and</strong> romance, a focus on sexuality <strong>and</strong><br />
strong representations of women as sexual <strong>and</strong> visual objects. 2 This<br />
objectification is, however, more critically presented in the late works,<br />
as a role projected onto the women characters by men, <strong>and</strong> one that<br />
they resist, whereas in the earlier work the texts themselves present<br />
women in that way, not, certainly, as passive or powerless, but primarily<br />
as the focus of male sexual desires <strong>and</strong> fears. This chapter <strong>and</strong> the<br />
next will examine more systematically the place of the visual in<br />
<strong>Conrad</strong>’s late representations of masculinity.<br />
‘You fellows see more than I could then’ (83), remarks Marlow to<br />
his small group of male listeners in ‘Heart of Darkness’. It is one of<br />
Marlow’s reflections on the problems of underst<strong>and</strong>ing his own<br />
experiences in Africa <strong>and</strong> an acknowledgement that he may not have<br />
grasped the full implications of those experiences at the time. It<br />
implies that his listeners may underst<strong>and</strong> more, or underst<strong>and</strong> differently,<br />
the meaning of the events that he is describing to them, but<br />
also perhaps that he himself now interprets them differently. As<br />
listeners or narratees, the group of men on board the Nellie locate the<br />
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