Conrad and Masculinity

Masculinity, ‘Race’ and Empire 33
mystifies this idea somewhat by attributing such power to Malay
women in particular, as ‘that great but occult influence which is one
of the few rights of half-savage womankind’ (22).
The description of Nina’s powerful look is only one of many references
in the novel to eyes, and to looking. Feminist film theory has
identified a failure to represent female desire in mainstream cinema
and such analysis of a more obviously visual medium may help us to
understand the rhetoric of the visual in Conrad. One form which the
effacement of female desire takes is the directing of the female desiring
look at nothing (nothing that the spectator/reader can see),
whereas the woman herself is voyeuristically presented as the object
of male desire, inviting the spectator/reader to join in the desiring
look of male characters. Focalization is the nearest equivalent in
fiction to the camera in film, and in the opening chapters of the novel
Almayer is the predominant focal character, although there is some
non-focalized narration. We are occasionally told Nina’s sense perceptions
(external focalization on Nina) but very little of her thoughts
and feelings. 52 Thus there is no sense of the narrative reaching
towards what Teresa de Lauretis terms ‘another (object of) vision and
the conditions of visibility for a different social subject’, one that
would be less male-oriented. 53 The object of Nina’s desire is invisible
and her own visibility is within a masculine economy that objectifies
her as passive object to be seen and penetrated. In the earlier chapters,
Nina is often described with eyes averted from her father, with a veiled
gaze of half-closed eyes, or looking out at the natural environment in
a way which suggest contemplation of a transcendent dream:
Her face turned towards the outer darkness, through which her
dreamy eyes seemed to see some entrancing picture.
(16)
Nina had listened to her father, unmoved, with her half-closed eyes
still gazing into the night.
(18–19)
... leaning back with half-closed eyes, her long hair shading her
face.
(46)
This presentation of her culminates in the scene when she and Dain
first meet. Yet since this is also the scene in which her desire is given
an object, it involves a significant play of desiring looks. Furthermore,