Conrad’s Charlie Marlow: A New Approach to “Heart of Darkness” and Lord Jim

181 Pages·2005·0.532 MB·English

by  Bernard J. Paris (auth.)

Conrad’s Charlie Marlow
Also by Bernard J. Paris
Experiments in Life: George Eliot’s Quest for Values (1965)
A Psychological Approach to Fiction: Studies in Thackeray, Stendhal,
George Eliot, Dostoevsky, and Conrad (1974)
Character and Conflict in Jane Austen’s Novels: A Psychological
Approach (1978)
Third Force Psychology and the Study of Literature, Ed. (1986)
Shakespeare’s Personality, Ed. with Norman Holland and Sidney
Homan (1989)
Bargains with Fate: Psychological Crises and Conflicts in Shakespeare
and His Plays (1991)
Character as a Subversive Force in Shakespeare: The History and the
Roman Plays (1991)
Karen Horney: A Psychoanalyst’s Search for Self-Understanding (1994)
Imagined Human Beings: A Psychological Approach to Character and
Conflict in Literature (1997)
The Therapeutic Process: Essays and Lectures by Karen Horney, Ed.
(1999)
The Unknown Karen Horney: Essays on Gender, Culture, and
Psychoanalysis, Ed. (2000)
Rereading George Eliot: Changing Responses to Her Experiments in
Life (2003)
Conrad’s Charlie Marlow
A New Approach to “Heart of
Darkness” and LORD JIM
Bernard J. Paris
CONRAD’SCHARLIEMARLOW
© Bernard J.Paris,2005.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2005 978-1-4039-6989-7
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First published in 2005 by
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ISBN 978-1-349-53157-8 ISBN 978-1-4039-8337-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9781403983374
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Paris,Bernard J.
Conrad’s Charlie Marlow :a new approach to Heart of darkness
and Lord Jim / by Bernard Paris.
p.cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1.Conrad,Joseph,1857–1924.Heart of darkness.2.Conrad,
Joseph,1857–1924—Characters—Marlow.3.Conrad,Joseph,
1857–1924.Lord Jim.4.Marlow (Fictitious character).I.Title.
PR6005.O4H47785 2005
823(cid:2).912—dc22 2005048706
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd.,Chennai,India.
First edition:December 2005
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Shirley
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Contents
Preface viii
Note xi
Introduction 1
Part I 9
1. Young Marlow 11
2. The Journey to the Inner Station 19
3. Marlow and Kurtz 37
4. Marlow the Narrator 55
Part II 73
5. Conrad’s Jim 75
6. Marlow’s Initial Response to Jim 86
7. Marlow Becomes Jim’s Ally 100
8. Marlow’s Inner Conflicts 111
9. Jim as a Mimetic Character 128
10. Marlow on Jim in Patusan 145
11. Where Does Conrad Stand in Lord Jim? 160
References 169
Index 171
Preface
This is a study of Charlie Marlow as he appears in “Youth,”
“Heart of Darkness,” and Lord Jim. So much has been written
about Marlow that it may be hard to imagine that a book devoted
to him can employ a really new approach; but the fact is that the
usual practice has been to see Marlow as a literary device, a char-
acter who serves Conrad’s purposes but is of no special interest in
himself. I believe that Marlow is Conrad’s finest character creation
and one of the most remarkable psychological portraits in litera-
ture. His formal and thematic functions have received a great deal
of attention, and I shall not ignore them here, but they cannot be
properly understood unless we comprehend what is going on
inside him. Amazingly, despite all that has been said about
Marlow, there has been little discussion of his motivations. My
object here is to do justice to Conrad’s genius in mimetic charac-
terization and to reinterpret two of his greatest works from the
perspective of a fuller understanding of their central figure.
I approach Marlow as a mimetic portrait, an imagined human
being whose thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, including his story-
telling, are expressions of his personality and experience. Except for
my own earlier work, this has simply not been done. I see Marlow
in “Youth,” “Heart of Darkness,” and Lord Jim as a continuously
evolving individual, at different stages of his life, whose disturbing
experiences and involvements with other characters generate anxi-
eties and inner conflicts from which he seeks relief through his nar-
rations. Each work in which Marlow appears is intelligible in its
preface / ix
own right, but all are illuminated by being considered together.
My primary focus is on “Heart of Darkness” and Lord Jim, but
“Youth” is important for an understanding of Marlow’s youthful
romanticism, which is subdued by his Congo experience but is
later reawakened by his contact with the irrepressible Jim.
Marlow’s character is revealed in large part through his rela-
tionships, particularly those with Kurtz and Jim. Like Marlow
himself, these relationships have been much discussed, but pri-
marily in terms of what Conrad is using them to say or to show. I
feel that Conrad portrays these relationships with a psychological
depth and subtlety that have yet to be fully appreciated. Marlow’s
relationship with Jim is one of the most fascinating in fiction, and
I give it special attention. Lord Jimstarts out as a story about the
title character, but it becomes even more the story of Marlow and
Jim and the effect of their interaction on both men. To compre-
hend this interaction, we must understand Jim as thoroughly as
we do Marlow. He is another superb mimetic portrait.
Although I emphasize the inner life of Conrad’s characters in a
way that has not been done by other critics, I do not ignore the
formal complexity and thematic richness of the works in which
they appear. Rather, I believe that my analysis of Marlow’s con-
flicts helps us better understand the structure of his narrations, his
relationships with his auditors, and the thematic ambiguities of
the stories he tells. In addition, I show how Conrad’s Lamarckian
belief in the inheritance of acquired characteristics influences his
treatment of racial issues, of the “inborn strength” that some men
lack but others possess, and of Marlow’s attitudes toward Kurtz
and Jim. I do not think the phrase “one of us” can be properly
understood without an awareness of this belief. In my discussion
of Lord Jim, I give considerable attention to the problems that
arise from Conrad’s shift from an omniscient narrator to Marlow,
and I conclude by trying to determine where Conrad stands in
this extremely elusive work.