"A World of Their Own": Subversion of gender expectations in Conrad's plays

Papers on Language and Literature, Winter 2001 by Wheatley, Alison E

Anne's reformation of female roles may not have the reverberations of Nora's slamming the door (at the end of A Doll House) or even Mrs. Warren promoting her profession (of prostitution in Shaw's play). While these other subversive heroines make their proclamations loudly and openly, it is to Anne's advantage to stay quiet. In fact, it is when she laughs aloud, as she has promised to do to warn Davidson, that the Man Without Hands avenges her so-called treachery against his version of her and kills her. Thus while her revisions of gender expectations may seem subtle, they have been part of her survival technique.

In the play version of The SecretAgent, completed in 1920 and based on Conrad's 1907 novel, Winnie was fully in charge of her decision to marry Verloc, seducing him daily with physical and other attentions so that he is persuaded both that he needs her and is loved "for himself" The first may be true, but the second surely is not: she loves what he can provide for her brother Stevie and for her mother, and she puts up with his sexual demands to get what she needs. In the fourth act, for example, when Verloc returns home the day of Stevie's death, which he has carelessly caused, grumbling about being "sick of this life" he has been leading and possibly leaving the country, Winnie, unaware of the calamity, is typically solicitous of his health and flirtatiously attempts to improve his mood. She reminds him that "This business isn't so bad. You have a comfortable home. [Pause.] And you are not tired of me. [ Takes his hand from behind and presses her lips to Mr. Verloc's forehead.]" (89). Startled apart by the shop bell ringing, he assures her "husk[ilyf' that "You know how to hold me" (90). And she has for seven years, never letting on her true feelings or motives.25

Thus Winnie is in many ways a secret agent, too. She appears to be taking her rightful place in her husband's script, but instead has her own agenda, just as Verloc is playing one governmental agency against another for his own benefit. Other men observing the Verlocs confirm Winnie's compliant appearance. The Assistant Commissioner describes Verloc's attitude toward Winnie in this way: "She [Winnie) is the only possession that he may really call his own" (81). For Verloc to possess her suggests that he controls her identity and that she sincerely complies, both of which we know not to be true. Later, Ossipon echoes this belief about her role in the marriage: "You seemed to live so happily together... You seemed to love him" (113). Winnie cri[es] in response, "Love him! [Voice drops.] I have been a good wife" (113). This resignation to the discrepancy between her version and the men's must remind us of Bessie's weary efforts to hold out against her father, Captain Hagberd, and Harry. Here, while Verloc and the other men tell the story of Winnie the Wife, her "secret" existence is much richer and more complicated than that.

Verloc's illusion of his domestic control derives from his focus on the visual, whereas Winnie believes that "Life doesn't stand too much looking into" (6). Verloc is simultaneously attracted to and overwhelmed by Winnie's appearance: she appears to him to be both devoted wife and seductive mistress. As Eileen Sypher has put it, in reference to the novel, Winnie is "the femme fatale, always provoking Verloc .. with her `full bust, in a tight bodice' and her `big eyes gleam [ing] under the dark lids', mak[ing] Verloc think she adores him" (9). Since she has proven to the audience how misguided his belief is, her appearance surreptitiously subverts his expectations of her behavior and intentions. In all reality, from Verloc's point of view, and later Ossipon's, recoiling in horror at the murder she committed, she certainly is the "deadly woman," secretly plotting the demise of the men in her path. Winnie's seductive appearance manifests Verloc's idea of her, but it also suggests her underlying power. It is significant that both she and Bessie are described similarly in stage directions: Winnie is "about thirty, dark hair done up very neatly, . . . good figure, plain, close-fitting dark dress" (SA 1), and Bessie is "about twenty-five. Black dress, . . . A lot of mahoganycolored hair loosely done up ... Full figure. . . " (ODM 1). These two women who seem most proscribed by their narrow roles of Wife and Daughter share this description of potential sensuality, with their tight bodices and pinned hair waiting to become unpinned. The ambiguity inherent in that fantasy of unpinning suggests not only the male desire, but also the very real potential of a female "wildness"that desires release. The appearance of Laughing Anne, the so-called "fallen woman," is more frankly open and sexual: she wears loose gowns and free-falling hair. The appearance of these female characters matching the perception of the males is what Laura Mulvey refers to as "the determining male gaze project[ing] its fantasy onto the female figure" (19). Hidden in this appearance of conformity, however, are the subversive versions of themselves these women actually portray.