Conrad and Masculinity

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