Conrad and Masculinity

Introduction 5
Conrad’s own (infrequent) use of the word ‘masculine’ tends to reflect
this tension by referring to inherent ‘masculine’ qualities, but in a
tone or context which draws the reader’s attention to the possibility
of variation, conflict or paradox within the ‘masculine’. Sometimes
this involves irony of tone, as when the narrator of Nostromo refers to
‘the heroic Garibaldino’ and his ‘masculine penetration of the true
state of the case’ (N, 542), when Viola is in fact deceived as to the
motives of Nostromo. Masculinity is presented as paradoxical in The
Secret Agent: ‘On account of that shrinking delicacy, which exists side
by side with aggressive brutality in masculine nature, the inquiries
into her circumstances had not been pushed very far’ (SA, 160). In
Under Western Eyes Sophia Antonovna describes men as ‘squeamish’
(UWE, 249) and speaks of ‘masculine cowardice and prudishness’
(250) and ‘masculine nature’ as ‘ridiculously pitiful in [its] aptitude to
cherish childish illusions’ (246). Again in Nostromo, the possibility of
innate gender distinctions failing to operate is mentioned: ‘It must
not be supposed that Mrs. Gould’s mind was masculine. A woman
with a masculine mind is not a being of superior efficiency; she is
simply a phenomenon of imperfect differentiation — interestingly
barren and without importance’ (N, 66–7). This combined assertion
and unsettling of inherent gender qualities reached its apogee in
Chance, in Marlow’s ruminations, which will be discussed in Chapter
6. The tendency of recent work in cultural and literary studies has
been to stress the historical and social basis of masculinity, whereas
many in the natural sciences (in particular geneticists) seem to want
to base it entirely in biology. Cross-disciplinary debates on the subject
are often marked by mutual distrust and incomprehension. It seems
likely that masculinity is constructed out of elements, some of which
are biologically given, but that such construction takes place through
social and discursive means, producing a wide diversity of masculinities,
actual and potential, and allowing the historical development of
these many forms of masculinity. Any attempt to reduce masculinity
to a mere function of maleness seems to me as implausible as the
contrary endeavour to deny any connection between the two.
Masculinity, then, might be regarded as a psychic structure, as a
fantasy, as a code of behaviour, or as a set of social practices and
constraints. 15 To describe it as an ideology brings all of these together,
while raising the question of whether masculinity is a form of false
consciousness (since there is disagreement as to whether an ‘ideology’
is necessarily false in this way). 16 The most general and ‘neutral’ definition
of ‘ideology’ (‘a collectively held system of ideas’) could be