“Petticoats” and “Sea Business”: Women Characters in Conrad’s Edwardian Short Stories

IN 1912, CONRAD WROTE to Edward Garnett describing "The Secret Sharer" with rare enthusiasm: "No damned tricks with girls there. Eh? Every word fits and there's not a single uncertain note" (CL5: 128). The flippant tone encourages the stereotype of Conrad as a misogynistic writer of sea stories for and about men, a characterization he objected to: "This damned sea business keeps off as many people as it gathers in."1 Yet the sea features in all of Conrad's novels, even if indirecdy Winnie Verloc's leap into the English Channel in The Secret Agent (1907) ? or only briefly ? Peter Ivanovitch's escape from Russia in Under Western Eyes (1911). Nonetheless, Conrad's annoyance at being categorized as a "sea writer" suggests that whatever the pervasive presence of the sea in his work, he did not consider it his central conceit. With respect to his female characters the emphasis is reversed: despite the complaint that women characters figure infrequentiy in Conrad's writing, "The Secret Sharer" is his only story not to introduce one. Attributing the tale's artistic success to its exclusively male concerns, Conrad did, however, admit "tricks with girls" in his other stories even asking Garnett: "Do you think one can make something interesting without any women?!" (CL1: 171). The question implies that however reluctant Conrad was to write about women, he had to do so not merely for the sake of popu larity but out of interest. His description of "The Secret Sharer" is a deliberate attempt to deflect and confuse or an admission that women represent one of his most problematic concerns.