No, 55o 5 AN EVALUATION OF CONRAD’S LATER NOVELS Roy C. Meyerhoff A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY December 1978 Approved by Doctoral Committee li Abstract This paper attempted a new analysis and evaluation of Joseph Conrad’s last three completed novels, The Arrow of Gold, The Rescue, and The Rover, since they are commonly felt to be of slight significance by many leading Conrad scholars, an accepted critical position that the writer thought should be reexamined. Suspense, the two hundred and seventy-four page novel left unfinished at Conrad’s death, was discussed briefly in an appendix. The approach taken to these works was to examine them in detail from a different perspective than that used by other critics, that is, from the ways in which alienation, a basic concept in the writings of Joseph Conrad, appears in these novels. The attempt was primarily to discover in what significant ways the treatment of alienation in these last works differs from that in earlier works. For the purposes of this paper alienation was divided into partial alienation and total alienation, with partial alienation leading to, and culminating in, total alienation. These developmental categories are then divided into the functional categories of imaginative alienation and perceptive alienation. In imaginative alienation the individual has usually estranged himself from other characters by the nature and extent of his iii illusions. For perceptive alienation the individual is in isolation because the quality of his illusions is not sustaining. There was a difference in emphasis as seen in terms of this concept in the late novels since Conrad seemed to have shifted away from the metaphysical concerns of alienation to concentrate on the characters’ attempts to be reintegrated into the society. Also, each protagonist made a definite adjustment in his existence in an endeavor to come to terms with his alienation in a way which no other protagonist before him had. These novels were found to be of definite significance to the full appreciation of Conrad as a consummate artist. In his final completed novel, The Rover. Conrad managed to resolve the issue of alienation by allowing his protagonist to become a fully integrated member of society. IV TABLE OF CONTENTS Page INTRODUCTION...................................................1 THE ARROW OF GOLD: AESTHETIC LOVE AND SOCIETY.............16 THE RESCUE: THE LORD JIM SYNDROME..........................39 THE ROVER: REGENERATION......................................67 CONCLUSION............. 87 BIBLIOGRAPHY................................................. 94 APPENDIX...................................................... 98 Suspense: A Suspended State............. 99 i Introduction Conrad’s last four novels. The Arrow of Gold, The Rescue, The Rover, and Suspense (if one may be allowed the presumption that a two hundred and seventy-four page unfinished work can be called a noveltend to be dismissed, seemingly without as much as a careful reading, by most critics. What is most unfortunate is that the very individuals who find little of value in the last novels are known for their insights into Conrad’s other works. In Order to identify these commentators more readily, one can borrow a terra from Thomas Moser and call them the “achievement and decline” critics. Albert J. Guerard finds sickness, fatigue (according to Guerard these qualities can also be seen in Conrad and his family at the time of his writing these works), and a "failure of imaginative power."1 Thomas Moser notes that the characters are not well drawn and not dramatized: "Even more seriously, the last novels show that Conrad has finally lost control of the basic tools of his 2 craft.” Douglas Hewitt, in Conrad: A Reassessment, feels that the later novels show a "marked inferiority" compared to 1 Albert J. Guerard, Conrad the Novelist (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1965), p. 260. 2 2 Thomas Moser, Joseph Conrad (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1957), p. 180. 2 his earlier works, and that "it seems plain that the later works in general, show a retreat from the degree of awareness • 3 of the complexity of human emotion found in the earlier ones." Bernard C. Meyer, a psychoanalyst who perhaps feels a little out of his milieu, adopts the critical perspective of doctor- to-sick patient (that is, he analyzes the man instead of the work) and then attempts to justify this approach: "The spectacle of artistic decline can hardly fail to arouse perplexity as well as regret, and it is only natural for both 4 critic and biographer to try to account for it." Frederick R. Karl follows along in the same vein albeit with somewhat more insight: Nevertheless, granting that the later fiction is indeed a letdown after the profundity of Victory, it is still of great importance as a mirror of the established, but exhausted, novelist, who, no longer able to experiment, had to draw upon all his practical skill to produce five more novels.5 Leo Gurko pretty much sums up the critical feeling toward these last works: "This is the art of old age, the last 6 expostulation of the exhausted self." Douglas Hewitt, Conrad: A Reassessment (Chester Springs, Pa.: Dufour Editions, 1968), pp. 4, 89. 4 Bernard C. Meyer, Joseph Conrad: A Psychoanalytic Biography (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1967), p. 242. 5 Frederick R. Karl, A Reader*s Guide to Joseph Conrad (New York: Noonday Press, 1960), p. 268. 6 Leo Gurko, Joseph Conrad: Giant in Exile (New York: The MacMillan Co., 1962), p. 225. 3 These critics begin with the premise that Conrad has somehow lost his imaginative and stylistic ability, an idea that leads to a number of difficulties. First, generally the last works are of a lesser quality than Conrad’s masterpieces, but does this mean that he has completely lost his ability to write? Second, if they base their argument on this total loss of control they have no choice but to spend their time in trying to account for the tremendous falling off of the last novels. And ultimately, this is what they do, agreeing that Conrad, because of ill health and financial problems, simply deteriorated as an artist. One may note that this kind of approach is highly evaluative as well as reductive. Perspicacious criticism needs to be analytical and inclusive in nature. Here one can turn to Susanne K. Langer and her idea of the generative concept. That is, if you ask the right questions you can come up with answers different from those usually given: Such ideas as identity of matter and change of form, or as value, validity, virtue, or as outer world and inner consciousness, are not theories; they are the terms in which theories are conceived; they give rise to specific questions and are articulated only in the form of these questions.7 What Mrs. Langer means by this quotation is that asking the same questions will lead to conventional answers. It seems fairly obvious that the critics are too busy evaluating to ask 7 SuSanne K. Langer, Philosophy in a New Key (New York: The New American Library, 1951), p. 19. 4 the right questions. Therefore, if we utilize a basic Conradian concept as the questioning mode then it should cast a new light on these works, and one worthy of our serious attention. Before one moves on to employing the questioning concept, one needs to describe the novels briefly and attempt to characterize them. In The Arrow of Gold, the protagonist is hired to run guns for the group supporting the cause of Don Carlos, the pretender to the Spanish throne. This protagonist becomes involved romantically with his employer, and they run away together. The novel is set primarily in Marseilles. Basically, it is concerned with the protagonist’s initiation into life through the love of a beautiful woman. In The Rescue, the protagonist is preparing a revolution in order to return his native friend to power in one of the islands of the Malaysian group. Just when his preparations are nearing completion a British yacht is stranded on a sandbar in the staging area. The protagonist subsequently falls in love with the wife of the yacht’s owner. When some of the yacht people are captured by the natives the protagonist is torn between his honor and his passion. The protagonist in The Rover has returned to his native France to die. It is shortly after the French Revolution has concluded. He wishes to be left alone and goes to live outside Toulon, but becomes involved in the lives around him. The protagonist succeeds in removing the obstacles to a young 5 couple’s romance, and he then goes off to die a heroic death for his country. Suspense’s protagonist finds himself in Genoa in a time not long after the French Revolution. Napoleon has just been exiled to Elba. He is surrounded by intrigue, gets involved with Napoleonic agents, and presumably is headed for Elba when the novel ends abruptly. If one employs a different conceptual organization from that which is utilized by the other critics and applied what is derived from this as a tool, one can read the novels in a somewhat different way. The approach to these works taken here is to examine them by utilizing, as a framework, a conception of alienation, that is, to try to see what has happened to this concept (the assumption being that changes have occurred in it) by the time Conrad wrote his last novels. The justification for utilizing this theme is that alienation is one of the basic Conradian themes. The following explanation of the Conradian ethos is not the only one nor is it always so clear and well defined, but it is a well accepted analysis.