Joseph Conrad
Married to the Devil: The Secret Agent's Critique of Late-Victorian Gender Roles By Brandon Colas Bookshop English Literature Joseph Conrad York Notes ... GCSE Books Martial Bourdin's failed bombing attempt and the international anarchist movement in London set the stage for Joseph Conrad's 1907 novel The Secret Agent . At the time period of this work, anarchism was in its early stages of development. Anarchists saw many problems in society, but rarely offered practical solutions to improve anyone's living conditions. This discrepancy lends itself naturally to irony, and did not go unnoticed by contemporary intellectuals. As most critics observe, Conrad's extremely ironic tone throughout The Secret Agent emphasizes a pessimistic attitude towards society and individuals. Norman Holland notes that Conrad uses a "heavily ironic and dry verbal style" to reveal the chaos present in each character's relationships (54). According to John Palmer, this "dark" irony is essential for the novel's structure. He states, " The Secret Agent is built [...] on the characteristic esthetic tensions of satirical fiction - misunderstandings, dramatic ironies, revealing symbolic parallels and contrasts, and the like" (104). Claire Rosenfield says that Conrad uses an ironic type of "gallows humor" to effectively communicate the darkness of the world portrayed in the novel. Life is so appalling that this humor arrives "in the midst of horror, the point at which despair becomes humorous" (121). E. M. W. Tillyard's perspective differs from that of Rosenfield and Palmer; from his perspective, Conrad keeps "his dreadful story within the bounds of comedy" by means of his ironic method (103). His comments imply that the ironic tone does not effectively convey the sinister darkness present in the story. | |
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