Conrad's Women

Abstract

Ehave learned to think of Joseph Conrad's writing career as falling into two distinct periods. The first, from 1895 until 1910, is period of great achievement during which a skeptical Conrad portrayed isolated, deluded individuals stumbling into a moral abyss and either being destroyed or emerging with a stoical dedication to human solidarity. The second period begins 1910 when Conrad, after completing Under Western Eyes, suffered some kind of breakdown. With exception of The Shadow-Line (1917), his late fiction is weakened by absence of earlier skepticism and austerity; these works, Conrad's writing is sentimental and romantic, full of unconvincing tales of timid heroes who are inspired by powerful women. This change Conrad's fiction is called a by Douglas Hewitt, Thomas Moser, and Albert J. Guerard,1 all of whose books appeared 1950's. The key to decline is what Moser calls the uncongenial subject-women, especially women love. Moser demonstrates that Conrad had difficulty finishing books about love (The Sisters and The Rescue, for example), that he was unable to dramatize emotions, that sexual subject matter was inhibiting for him. Moser suggests that Conrad could not write about love because he didn't really believe in it: We must guard against being surprised, shocked or horrified at Conrad's negative attitude toward love. How could it be otherwise? Conrad sees man as lonely and morally isolated, harried by egoistic longings for