BETRAYAL AND MORAL IMAGINATION: A STUDY OF JOSEPH CONl{AD'S FIVE MAJOR WORKS by Chull Wang 11 1 Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Maryland in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 1990 c. J vol. L Ail i I ~ y: ~~ ''l;''JJ ,: .tJ/ ? • ,. I Advisory Committee: ·M·.:. -,~ · q... ·'...· , Professor Morris Freedman, Chairman/Advisor • · /( '.: ..i Professor George A. Panichas l : Professor John D. Russell Professor John Howard ; J Professor Marvin Breslow / ~( Vo/ © Copyright by Chull Wang 1990 ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: BETRAYAL AND MORAL IMAGINATION: A STUDY OF JOSEPH CONRAD'S FIVE MAJOR WORKS Chull Wang, Doctor of Philosophy, 1990 Dissertation directed by: Professor Morris Freedman Department of English A senes of Joseph Conrad's five maJor novels, beginning with lord Jim (1900), followed by Nostromo (1904), The Secret Agent (1907), Under Western Eyes (1911), and concluding with Victory (1915), are all concerned with the theme of betrayal. These novels demonstrate Conrad's artistic depth and ultimately provide a better way of understanding his profound "moral imagination." The "standing jump" Conrad made out of Poland certainly motivated him to speculate diligently and almost exhaustively about the significance of the "jump" or betrayal. Conrad did not, however, remain in a personal realm. He transcended, as Russell Kirk said of T.S. Eliot, "the barriers of private experience" by shaping his unique experience into a universal art with the power of his moral imagination. His treatment of betrayal is too comprehensive, too artistic to be merely private or personal. The jjfe of Conrad was a ceaseless and always agonizing struggle, as Eliot said of Shakespeare, "to transmute his personal and private agonies into something rich and strange, something universal and 11npersonal." It is F.R. Leavis who first noted Conrad's "moral intensity" and thereby placed him in the "Great Tradition" of English literature, along With Jane Austen, George Eliot, Henry James, and D.H. Lawrence. Conrad surely occupies his place in the "Great Tradition" not only as an "innovator in form and method" but also as an artist whose "moral intensity" stands out among English writers. Any study of Conrad should not ignore his passion for "the moral discovery" as well as his "spirit of love for mankind." The "moral discovery" was for Conrad "the object of every tale." It is certainly through such moral imagination that Conrad succeeds rn, to borrow Lionel Trilling's phrase, "involving the reader himself in the moral life, Inviting him to put his own motives under examination." It is also through the redeeming and almost healing power of the moral imagination that Conrad's vision as a whole always resists becoming either wholly existential or merely nihilistic. II DEDICATION To My Mother and Father To Mi-Young, Ihn-Woo, and the Baby iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS It is my pleasure to acknowledge and appreciate the debts I have incurred in writing this work. To Professor Morris Freedman who patiently and critically steered the progress of the work and without whose scholarly guidance and unfailing generosity my achievement would not have been possible, I am immensely grateful. He has taught me not only through his vast knowledge of literature but through his human "touch." In the many conversations which I had with him, he has shown me the meaning beyond literature. And I wjsh to extend my gratitude to Mrs. Freedman for her hospitality during my frequent stay at the house. Grateful acknowledgements are also due to Professor George A. Paniclias for his kindness and encouragement. He has been thoroughly supportive of my work and generously sponsored me to a Fellowship. r learned a great deal not only from his passionate, thoughtful lecture but from the many talks I had with him and his "art-letters." Perhaps the only way I could ever repay what Professor Freedman and Professor Panichas have done for me would be by way of becoming a good, affectionate teacher like them. IV I wjsh to thank Professor John D. RusseH who has read the manuscript with painstaking alertness, made valuable suggestions, and made it possible to enrich and smoothen the work. To Professor John Howard who generously served on the committee, I am also grateful. He has helped me in every possible way throughout my graduate study at Maryland. Our graduate students should be grateful that he has been the Director of Graduate Studies. I wish to extend my gratitude to Professor Marvin Breslow for reading the manuscript of a stranger and serving on the committee. I am indebted to I-LB. Earhart Foundation for honoring me to be a Fellowship recipient to complete this work. The Fellowship truly has been a "rescue work." My gratitude to my mother and father, my wife and children cannot possibly be expressed in words alone; this work, for what is worth, is theirs. V TABLE OF CONTENTS Ill Ack11owledg1nents 1 Chapter I Introduction 37 Chapter II Lord Jim 76 Chapter III Nostromo 118 Chapter IV The Secret Agent 160 Chapter V Under Western Eyes 198 Chapter VI Victory 238 Bibliography Chapter I Introduction I should be sorry ~l I only entertained thern [the audience}, I wish to make them better. George Handel I have always approached my task in the spirit of love for mankind. Joseph Conrad It has become established that Joseph Conrad was almost always interested in the act of betrayal and its aftermath. Perhaps it would be more appropriate and more accurate to say that the theme of betrayal is at the very heart of Conrad's fictional universe. Numerous critics have noted that Conrad's Polish background functioned as a source for his almost obsessive concern with the theme of betrayal. As early as 1930 ' Gustav Morf tried to extract Conrad's guilt complex from his various fiction. According to Morf, many of Conrad's works were ceaseless attempts, by way of art, to justify his "desertion" from his native Poland. Lord Jim is, says Morf, "a confession of a man tortured by doubts and nightmarish fears."' Morf's analysis of Conrad's guilt complex, though somewhat oversimplified, has some truth in it. Czeslaw Milosz also notes that "a carefully hidden complex of treason is discernible in some of ------------ 1Gustav Morf, The Polish Heritage of Joseph Conrad (London: Sampson, 1930) J 49. 2 fConracl 's J writings--a feeling that he had betrayed the cause so fanatically embraced by his compatriots and, above all, by his father. "2 In March 1899, Polish novelist Eliza Orzeszkowa accused Conrad of betraying Poland for financial gains: I must say that this gentleman, who writes popular and very lucrative novels in English, has almost caused me a nervous breakdown. My gorge rises when I read about him .... Creative talent forms the very head of the tree, the pinnacle of the tower ' the life-blood of the nation. And to take away that flower, to remove that pinnacle, to drain away that life- blood from the nation in order to pass it on to the Anglo-Saxons (who anyway lie on a bed of roses) just because they pay better. ... It is even hard to think about it without shame! 3 One may get the impression from Eliza Orzeszkowa's harsh criticism that Conrad became ri ch in England. But the fact is quite otherwise, as Zclzislaw Najder indicates: "writing never gave him financial security." 4 It ------------ 2 . Czeslaw Milosz, "Joseph Conrad in Polish :Eyes,". Tl~e Art of Joseph Conrad: A Cruical Symposium, ed. R. W. Stallman (East Lansing: M1 ch1gan State UP, 1960) 42. Sec also 35-45. 3Eli za Orzcszkowa, "The Emigration of Talent_, " Conrad under Familial Eyes, Lrans. Halina Carroll -Najdcr, ed. Zdzislaw Najdcr (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1983) 187-8. 4 Najdcr, .Joseph Conrad: A Chronicle (New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, J 983) 255. 3 IS very J, "k e I y, as Karl and Najder observe, that Conrad read the article or was informed of it and that he was deeply hurt by the charges of betrayal and desertion.5 However unjustifiable or misguided,6 her charge of betrayal may have had some impact on the theme of Lord Jim which was then being written. The attack may at least have made more poignant: Conrad's obsession with the act of betrayal. Perhaps it is not a coincidence that the theme of betrayal pervades most of Conrad's major nove.ls following Lord Jim, although his earlier works such as Almayer's Folly and An Outcast of the Islands contain more or Jess the same motif. In A Personal Record, one of his autobiographical works, Conrad himself was very conscious of his poignant sense of alienation, a result of hi s "standing jump" out of hi s country Poland: I verily beli eve mme was the only case of a boy of my nationality and antecedents taking a, so to speak, standing jump out of hi s racial surroundings and associations.7 ------------ 5See Frederick Karl's Joseph Conrad: The Three lives (New York: Farrar, I 979) 9- 12,. Najdcr's Joseph Conrad 255-6, and Paul Kirscbncr's Conrad: The Psychologist as Artist (Edinburgh: Oliver, J 968) 174. 6V.S . Prilchett calls it "foolish": "When one or Lwo Polish critics acc used Conrad of '.betraying' hi s co untry leavin g iL to write in a fc~reign lOngue--'for money' one of Lhem l.?rzeszkowa] ludicrously sa id- -Lhey were as foolish. as .~hose who att.ack Henry James, 1.S. Eliot, Joyce, Beckel! and Auden for expaln auon. See The Tale Bearers (New York: Random, 1980) 44.