Underground explosion : the ethics of betrayal in Joseph Conrad’s Under Western Eyes and Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano»,
Abstract
Based on a linguistic trick, “The Brute: an Indignant Tale” draws the reader’s attention to appearances that can be misleading, creating shifting grounds that challenge the conventions of the time. Part of these misleading appearances concern gender differences, men and women often appearing to exchange their stereotypical attributes, as underlined by Jeremy Hawthorn who sees “The Brute” as: “a representative example of Conrad’s fondness for challenging the conventional attributes of masculinity and femininity” (Hawthorn 2008: 112). This will allow us to wonder whether the malevolent ship could not be seen as a kind of white whale on which evil intentions are projected, and which comes to represent the fantasies men may have about women’s inscrutable desires. Inscrutability remains the lasting impression the tale creates, an inscrutability which is the shifting ground in which Conrad’s stories are rooted.