Conrad and Masculinity

Masculinity and the Body 81
physicality) into the relations between the officers. The presence in
‘Typhoon’ of suggestions of desire between men is an unsettling possibility
within the structure of moral and psychological insights into
matters such as duty, courage, fear and imagination that the story
overtly offers the reader. Mark Wollaeger, commenting on the importance
of physical proximity in the story, argues that MacWhirr’s
‘self-possession’ counters the loss of self which threatens Jukes. He
instances Jukes’s contact with MacWhirr which produces ‘an access of
confidence, a sensation that came from outside like a warm breath’ (T,
89) (FS, 124). However, rather than reconfirming the autonomous,
defended male self/body, such a process implies an opening of self to
other via a physical closeness.
If the idea of thinking through the body bears more explicitly on
‘Typhoon’, it is perhaps in respect of MacWhirr’s notorious lack of
imagination and his consequent impressive but dangerous lack of fear
of the tropical storm into which he steers his ship. Imagining what an
experience would be like, as opposed to simply recognizing the fact
that it may occur, frequently involves a form of thinking through the
body – anticipating and perhaps even experiencing in advance,
psychosomatic responses – a rush of adrenaline perhaps, a dry mouth
and even an unsettled stomach. The major role attributed to sexuality
by feminist thinkers attempting to think through the body is surely in
part because sexuality in humans so amply involves the imagination:
sexual arousal does not require the physical presence of a sexual
object. Here again MacWhirr would seem to be initially lacking. We
are told, in the account of his earlier life, that his ‘young woman’ was
‘called Lucy’, but that it ‘did not suggest itself to him to mention [to
his parents] whether he thought the name pretty’ (6). Of MacWhirr’s
response to gaining his first command, we are told that ‘the view of a
distant eventuality could appeal no more [to MacWhirr] than the
beauty of a wide landscape to a purblind tourist’ (8). Presumably, the
sexuality of sailors is subjected to particular pressures by the circumstances
of long absences from home. Jeremy Hawthorn comments on
MacWhirr’s inability to communicate meaningfully in his letters to a
wife who lacks the imagination to read between the lines just as he
lacks the ability to imagine what might interest her. Ironically, she
fails to read a letter which is ‘for once ... worth reading, one written
by a sadder and wiser MacWhirr’ (NT, 225). What, then, of
MacWhirr’s sexuality? For a man incapable of responding to that
which is not immediately present, prolonged absence from a sexual
partner would have to imply, not merely frustration, but the total