Conrad and Masculinity

Masculinity and the Body 77
to them it is worth noting that the size and strength of the
boatswain’s hands, and his hairiness, are echoed in the description of
Captain MacWhirr ‘clutching in his powerful, hairy fist an elegant
umbrella’ (4). Jeremy Hawthorn, writing about the expressive body in
Under Western Eyes, notes the importance of hands as (along with eyes)
the ‘most communicatively significant parts of the human body’ (NT,
244), and identifies ‘chains of association’, linking the ‘strong’ hands
of the morally strong Natalia to those of her brother, in contrast to the
‘white shapely hand’ of Prince K—, the ‘skeleton hand’ of Madame de
S— and the ‘soft hand’ of Peter Ivanovitch, all indicative of the moral
inadequacies of these characters (NT, 243–5). Hands, of course, are not
only particularly expressive but are crucial to manual work, and it is
not surprising that Conrad, as a sailor, should value strong hands as
he valued work itself. The similarity between the hands of the Captain
and the boatswain, then, might be taken as indicative of the democracy
of labour as Conrad sees it. Conrad’s vision of shipboard life
(which at times functions as a form of paradigm of society) is hierarchical
and authoritarian on the one hand, and yet on the other hand
stresses the communality of work and duty in the face of hardship: the
sense of the existential equality of all in the face of the sea.
MacWhirr’s ‘sturdy’ body, with a face which simply reflects his character,
and dressed in a manner which makes no compromise with the
influences of the Far East, its weather and culture (T, 3), has a solidity
of presence which is implicitly contrasted with the exotic, enigmatic,
undisciplined bodies of the Chinese coolies:
The fore-deck, packed with Chinamen, was full of sombre clothing,
yellow faces, and pigtails, sprinkled over with a good many naked
shoulders, for there was no wind, and the heat was close. The
coolies lounged, talked, smoked, or stared over the rail; some,
drawing water over the side, sluiced each other; a few slept on
hatches.
(6–7)
The racist high–low binary is mapped onto the geography of the ship.
Jukes, talking to the leader of the Chinese coolies,
was gruff, as became his racial superiority, but not unfriendly. The
Chinaman, gazing sad and speechless into the darkness of the
hatchway, seemed to stand at the head of a yawning grave.
(13)