The Unenchanted Garden: Children, Childhood, and Conrad

CHILDREN ARE VISIBLE much of the fiction written late-Victorian and Edwardian England. Charles Dickens repeatedly placed a child - Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Pip Great Expectations - at the centre of his novels. George Eliot Mill on the Floss and Silas Marner, Thomas Hardy Jude the Obscure, Rudyard Kipling Jungle Book, John Galsworthy Forsyte Saga all place at the of their stories, as does Henry James WhatMaisie Knew and most chillingly Turn of the Screw. era of geographical exploration throughout the British Empire saw, 1904, J. M. Barrie's discovery of Neverland, and, twenty years later, the year Joseph Conrad died, Christopher Robin went down to the Palace the first time, with Alice.The place of Conrad's work and has barely been considered as - with the exception of his sons, Borys and John - are seldom seen and hardly heard. Conrad appears to have had little interest little people. aims of this primarily biographical essay are to consider the who appear Conrad's fiction, to observe the relationship between Conrad and his boys, and briefly to examine Conrad's recollections of his own childhood.1GhostsConrad's attitude to is hard to gauge when reading his novels and memoirs. No infant appears his fiction. nearest one gets to mention of a baby is the opening paragraph of Shadow-Line : The very young have, properly speaking, no moments (3), a revealingly naive observation from such a psychologically astute writer.When Conrad does depict a child, it is usually much older and usually female - Nina Almayer's Folly, Antonia Avellanos and Giorgio Viola's daughters Giselle and Linda Nostromo, Natalia Haldin Under Western Eyes, Hermann's niece Falk and, Chance, Hora de Barrai and Mrs Fyne's diree daughters. InAlmayer's Folly, Nina's father notes nostalgically of his daughter was nearly as tall as himself but he liked to recall the time when she was litde and they were all all to each (16). A group of appears The Idiots, but the focus is on their story but on their effect on their parents.The marriages (or marriages effect) Conrad depicted - Almayer's to his Malay girl, Jim's to Jewel, Al van Hervey's The Return, Charles and Emilia Gould Nostromo, the Verlocs - are strained and mosdy childless.In Secret Agent, Conrad observes that in her heart of hearts Winnie's mother was not perhaps displeased that the Verlocs had no children (12). Both Verlocs' relationships with Stevie are couched near-parental terms - Winnie is described as having quasi-maternal affection her brother, watching him with maternal vigilance (13,14). Later, seeing her husband walk her brother to his deathWinnie, at the shop door, did see this fatal attendant upon Mr Verloc's walks. She watched the two figures down the squalid street, one tall and burly, the other slight and short, with a thin neck, and the peaked shoulders raised slightly under the large semitransparent ears. material of their overcoats was the same, their hats were black and round shape. Inspired by the similarity of wearing apparel, Mrs Verioc gave rein to her fancy.Might be father and son, she said to herself. She thought also that Mr Verloc was as much of a father as poor Stevie ever had his life. (142)The phrase is repeated later the novel, with a twist tense - Might have been a father and reproducing the supreme illusion of her life (184) as Winnie realizes the trudi about her brother's fate.The exception is the son of the shipwrecked Yanko Goorall, Amy Foster's (142). Yanko is discovered longing for their boy to grow up so that he could have a man to talk with diat language that to our ears sounded so disturbing, so passionate, and so bizarre (137); his own cbroken English . …

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