Conrad and Masculinity

Notes
Introduction
1 For the view that Conrad’s portrayal of women is unsuccessful see Thomas
Moser, Joseph Conrad: Achievement and Decline (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1957). Gordon Thompson and Susan Lundvall Brodie,
who both seek to defend Conrad’s representation of women, recognize
that the idealization of women in Conrad’s fiction represents a projection
of male needs and fantasies, but nevertheless tend to perpetuate this idealization
in their own critical discourse. See Gordon Thompson, ‘Conrad’s
Women’, Nineteenth-Century Fiction, 32 (1978), 442–65; Susan Lundvall
Brodie, ‘Conrad’s Feminine Perspective’, Conradiana, 16 (1984), 141–54.
2 Nina Pelikan Straus, ‘The Exclusion of the Intended from Secret Sharing in
Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness”’, Novel, 20 (1987), 123–37; Karen Klein, ‘The
Feminist Predicament in Conrad’s Nostromo’, in Brandeis Essays in
Literature, ed. John Hazel Smith (Waltham, MA: Department of English and
American Literature, Brandeis University, 1983), 101–16.
3 For example, Wendy Moffat, ‘Domestic Violence: The Simple Tale within
The Secret Agent’, English Literature in Transition 1880–1920, 37.4 (1994),
465–89. Two books on Conrad’s representations of women seek to defend
him from the charge of sexism, using humanist rather than theoretical
approaches: Ruth L. Nadelhaft, Joseph Conrad (Feminist Readings) (Hemel
Hempstead: Harvester, 1991); Heliena Krenn, Conrad’s Lingard Trilogy:
Empire, Race and Woman in the Malay Novels (New York and London:
Garland Publishing, 1990).
4 For the developing debate on masculinity in Conrad, see the books by
Koestenbaum (1989), Hawthorn (1990), Showalter (1991), Bristow (1991),
Lane (1995), Stott (1992), the chapters by Mongia, McCracken, Roberts,
Hampson and Elbert in CG, and the articles by Roberts (1992, 1993, 1996),
Hampson (1996) and Bonney (1991), all listed in the bibliography.
5 Jeffrey Meyers, Homosexuality and Literature: 1890–1930 (London: Athlone
Press, 1977); Robert R. Hodges, ‘Deep Fellowship: Homosexuality and Male
Bonding in the Life and Fiction of Joseph Conrad’, Journal of
Homosexuality, 4 (Summer 1979), 379–93; Robert J.G. Lange, ‘The Eyes
Have It: Homoeroticism in Lord Jim’, West Virginia Philological Papers, 38
(1992), 59–68; Wayne Koestenbaum, Double Talk: The Erotics of Male
Literary Collaboration (New York and London: Routledge, 1989), pp.
166–73; Richard Ruppel, ‘Joseph Conrad and the Ghost of Oscar Wilde’,
The Conradian, 23.1 (Spring 1998), 19–36.
6 See Joseph Bristow, Empire Boys: Adventures in a Man’s World (London:
Harper Collins, 1992).
7 See Bristow, pp. 153–66.
8 Laurence Davies, ‘Conrad, Chance and Women Readers’, in CG, 75–88 (p.
78). Davies cites Conrad’s letter to The Times of 15 June 1910, CL, IV, 327.
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