Race, Gender, and Closure in Conrad's Lord Jim

Abstract

This article argues that critical understandings of gendered closure often overlook the intersection of race. Examining Conrad's Lord Jim demonstrates how Jewel's lack of closure in the novel frustrates ideological expectations, ultimately revealing the limitations of the marriage/death binary. The spaces afforded and denied to Jewel in this text expose the inability of closure and endings to bear the burden of ideological significance in the late Victorian/ early modernist novel. By exploring the way the text moves away from Jewel, this article questions whether there is a rhetorical violence in being denied a fixed ending.