Conrad and Masculinity

Vision and the Economies of Empire and Masculinity 205
worked and lived closely together often without women, but where
open homosexuality was taboo. Conversely, Jeffrey Meyers takes
Heyst’s relationship with Morrison as clearly a ‘homosexual friendship’.
While this seems a possible reading, Meyers’s conception of what
such a relationship would imply leads him to claim that Heyst ‘never
desires Lena’ and is impotent in their sexual encounters. 23 The former
seems to me difficult to argue, given passages such as: ‘He remembered
that she was pretty, and, more, that she had a special grace in the intimacy
of life’ (215); ‘He looked at her figure of grace and strength, solid
and supple, with an ever-growing appreciation’ (218). Heyst’s alleged
impotence Meyers deduces from phrases such as ‘He stopped, struck
afresh by the physical and moral sense of the imperfections of their
relations’ (222). Yet the sentence continues, ‘—a sense which made
him desire her constant nearness’, and the overall effect on Heyst of
the relationship suggests a growing love, desire and jealousy.
Furthermore, Heyst’s allusion to their sexual relations prompts from
Lena ‘a stealthy glance of passionate appreciation’ (195). Meyers goes
on to the yet more dubious assertion, that Lena’s supposed previous
sexual experience ‘lends substance to Ricardo’s claim ... that he and
Lena have a great deal in common’. 24 Here Meyers seems in danger of
succumbing to the misogyny which he (rightly) sees in Jones and
Ricardo and (more debatably) in Heyst. Why would sexual experience
give a woman a great deal in common with a violent professional criminal
and would-be rapist? In point of fact, when Lena says that only
since being with Heyst has she realized ‘what a horror it might have
been’ (195) if she had succumbed to Schomberg, she clearly implies
that her sexual experience was very limited. Most disturbingly, Meyers
suggests that Ricardo must in fact (‘despite Conrad’s explanations’ to
the contrary) have succeeded in raping Lena and that ‘since the
passionate Lena is a “bad girl” with considerable sexual experience and
Heyst is clearly unable to satisfy her emotional or physical needs, she
subconsciously responds to Ricardo’s sexual assault.’ 25 This is a very
literal-minded reading of the haze of ambiguity and transgression that
Conrad creates around questions of sexuality in Victory: Meyers
assumes that a character either is or isn’t homosexual, and if he is, he
cannot be attracted to a women. As with ‘Heart of Darkness’, I would
argue that, instead of trying to determine a definite but hidden homosexuality,
it may be more useful to notice the literary, moral and
political implications of the effect of ambiguity, the presence of hints
and uncertainty. Eve Sedgwick has shown some of the distorting effects
of homophobia in literary discourse. I would suggest that the traces of