Conrad and Masculinity

Masculinity, ‘Race’ and Empire 43
men to examine the structure of the relations between themselves.’ 72
This is not quite the situation here, since Stape is not, I take it, making
any claim to be a feminist. Nevertheless, it is rivalry between men that
is at issue at some level of the critical process, and a rivalry that repeats
outside the text something of the structure of rivalry inside the text: a
structure in which the Other (here, particularly, Aïssa) becomes the
stakes. In the next chapter I shall examine how Conrad’s fiction
moves to a more explicit examination of male bonds, and of how this
might affect us as readers, male or female.