W&M ScholarWorks Undergraduate Honors Theses Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects 5-2010 "The Cast-Off Mistress;" The changing face of seafaring in Conrad's Middle-fiction Margaret Hutchison College of William and Mary Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wm.edu/honorstheses Recommended Citation Hutchison, Margaret, ""The Cast-Off Mistress;" The changing face of seafaring in Conrad's Middle-fiction" (2010). Undergraduate Honors Theses. Paper 721. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/honorstheses/721 This Honors Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects at W&M ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Undergraduate Honors Theses by an authorized administrator of W&M ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. “THE CAST-OFF MISTRESS;” The changing face of Seafaring in Conrad’s middle-fiction Margaret Hutchison Advisor Professor Simon Joyce Committee: Professor Walter Wenska Professor Mary Ann Melfi Professor Laurie Wolf Spring 2010 1 “The Cast-Off Mistress;” The Changing face of Seafaring in Conrad’s Middle Fiction To understand Conrad the writer, one must understand that, in the words of critic Thomas Moser, this literary giant, “disciple of James, mentor of Ford Madox Ford, friend of Galsworthy, Wells, and Gide- had been first of all a seaman, really a seaman, and for twenty years” ( Lord Jim xi). Indeed, the personal history of Joseph Conrad prevents the separation of his literary and maritime careers. Born in Poland in 1857 as Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski and orphaned in 1869, Conrad went to sea at the age of sixteen. From his experiences there Conrad acquired his third language, English, and a nautical vocabulary, the union of which produced the rhetoric of his later masterpieces.