Conrad's Narratives of Difference Not Exactly Tales for Boys [Hardcover]

In Joseph Conrads tales, representations of women and of feminine generic forms like the romance are often present in fugitive ways. Conrads use of allegorical feminine imagery, fleet or deferred introductions of female characters, and hybrid generic structures that combine features of masculine tales of adventure and intrigue and feminine dramas of love or domesticity are among the subjects of this literary study. Many of Conrads critics have argued that Conrads fictions are aesthetically flawed by the inclusion of women and love plots; thus Thomas Moser has questioned why Conrad did not cut them out altogether. Yet a thematics of gender suffuses Conrads narrative strategies. Even in tales that contain no significant female characters or obvious love plots, Conrad introduces elusive feminine presences, in relationships between men, as well as in mens relationships to their ship, the sea, a shore breeze, or even in the gendered embrace of death. This book investigates an identifiably feminine point of view which is present in fugitive ways throughout Conrads canon. Conrads narrative strategies are articulated through a language of sexual difference that provides the vocabulary and grammar for tales examining European class, racial, and gender paradigms to provide acute and, at times, equivocal investigations of femininity and difference.

Introduction: Not Exactly Tales for Boys  1. Iconography and the Feminine Ideal: Torches, Blindfolds, and the true light of femininity in Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, The Rescue, and The Return   2. Plots and Performance: Conrad's tricks with girls in Freya of the Seven Isles, Under Western Eyes, An Outcast of the Islands, and The Rescue  3. Colonial Occupations: Race and Gender in An Outpost of Progress and The Nigger of the Narcissus   4. Politics in the House: Genre, Narrative, and the Domestic Dl"