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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 />

163

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