Conrad and Masculinity
Conrad and Masculinity
Conrad and Masculinity
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196 <strong>Conrad</strong> <strong>and</strong> <strong>Masculinity</strong><br />
gaze, rather than the subject of her own desire. Like the woman in the<br />
photograph, Lena does (sometimes) look firmly in a way that might<br />
make manifest her desire. But the narrative of the novel finally endorses<br />
Heyst’s desire by setting her up as an iconic sexual object <strong>and</strong> by ending<br />
in her death <strong>and</strong> the effacement of her subjectivity. The negation of the<br />
female gaze in art, cinema <strong>and</strong> literature is often achieved through the<br />
death of the woman. Doane cites Claire Johnston’s view of death as the<br />
‘location of all impossible signs’, <strong>and</strong> reads three mainstream films of the<br />
1940s as demonstrating that ‘the woman as subject of the gaze is clearly<br />
an impossible sign’. 11 Irigaray argues that the effacement of women’s<br />
desire is a condition for the working out, by men, of the death drive, in<br />
that women are taken to represent the death drive <strong>and</strong> serve as a mirror<br />
to support the male ego in the process of building itself up <strong>and</strong> warding<br />
off death (S, 54–5). In fulfilling this function, woman is inscribed in a<br />
specular economy of the same:<br />
Now, if this [male] ego is to be valuable, some ‘mirror’ is needed to<br />
reassure it <strong>and</strong> re-insure it of its value. Woman will be the foundation<br />
for this specular duplication, giving man back ‘his’ image <strong>and</strong><br />
repeating it as the ‘same’.<br />
(S, 54) 12<br />
In accordance with this economy Heyst, talking to Lena, is talking to<br />
himself <strong>and</strong>, faced with her look, can read it only as the seductive veil<br />
over absence, death, castration, the abyss. Though Heyst also dies, it<br />
is Lena’s death that is presented as a symbolic sacrifice, made in order<br />
to rescue Heyst from his alienation <strong>and</strong> disengagement. After her<br />
death he is able belatedly to acknowledge to Davidson the importance<br />
of hope, love <strong>and</strong> trust in life (410). Lena has taken on the role of<br />
representing the death drive: this is one meaning of that death-bed<br />
scene. Irigaray writes that ‘in order to trans-form his death drives <strong>and</strong><br />
the whole instinctual dualism, in order to use his life to ward off death<br />
for as long as it takes to choose a death, man will have to work on<br />
building up his ego’ (S, 54). Lena frees Heyst from the legacy of<br />
deathly detachment that his father forced upon him, enabling Heyst<br />
to take up an identity <strong>and</strong> to choose a death.<br />
Irigaray’s use of an economic model in her reinterpretation of Freudian<br />
theory can elucidate the gender relations in Victory, since it is within an<br />
economy of masculinity that Lena’s role is worked out. 13 The tableau of<br />
her death is presented, not just to Heyst, but to Davidson <strong>and</strong> to the<br />
reader, while her relationship with Heyst is preceded <strong>and</strong> shadowed by