
North and South
Elizabeth Gaskell’s 'North and South' is well recognised as a radical novel about social and
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Jan
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Jan
13
‘He was an inch, perhaps two, under six feet, powerfully built, and he advanced straight at you with a slight stoop, and a fixed from-under stare which made you think of a charging bull. His voice was deep, loud, and his manner displayed a kind of dogged self-assertion which had nothing aggressive in it, It seemed a necessity, and it was addressed apparently as much at himself as at anybody else.’
Joseph Conrad (1857- 1924) is regarded as
one of the greatest novelists writing in the English language. What is
especially remarkable about this achievement is the fact that, having been born
in Poland, he did not speak English fluently until his twenties. He wrote many
stories which featured a nautical background, as in Lord Jim, which was
published in 1900 and established the author as one of the great storytellers
of the twentieth century. While the incidents in the novel are rooted in the
Victorian age, their telling and the themes imbued in the text are fresh and
modern. There is also a darkness to this and Conrad’s other novels which adds
an aching realism to his oeuvre.
Lord Jim is a book about courage and cowardice, self knowledge
and personal growth. It is set in the context of social change and colonial
expansion in late Victorian England, and embodies in the central character the
values and turmoil of a fading empire. Jim is haunted by his failure to be true
to his desire to be a good and heroic individual. One moment of weakness scars
his life. He is the chief mate on the steamship Patna and during a
voyage towards Mecca with a cargo of pilgrims, the ship strikes a submerged
obstacle and begins to sink. Jim is horrified to see the crew lowering a
lifeboat to save their own skins, leaving the pilgrims to drown. However, at
the last moment, he weakens and joins the crew in the lifeboat. The
consciousness of this monstrous crime and the attendant disgrace forever
torment Jim. Despite the fact that the pilgrims do not drown, the significance
of what Jim regards as an immoral and cowardly action is the crux of the novel.
Jim is the only member of the crew who
elects to face the official consequences of his action. He is stripped of his
master’s certificate and is publicly censured. The rest of the novel follows
his attempts at coming to terms with himself and his past misdeed, desperately seeking
acceptance and redemption.
Jim becomes a wanderer in far off places, encountering
reminders of his moral lapse wherever he goes. Finally he finds a kind of peace
in Patusan, a remote island where the chief of a friendly tribe makes him his
trusted advisor. The natives refer to him as ‘Tuan Jim’. Tuan means ‘Lord’, a
common form of polite address to superiors. It is on this island that for a
while that Jim finds peace and contentment, but this is eventually disturbed by
the arrival of pirates. It is at this critical moment in the novel that Jim is
finally able find a full remission of his sin.
Not only is Conrad’s descriptive writing both
lyrical and psychologically compelling, but the novel is also remarkable for
its sophisticated structure. In the main, the story is related by the character
Marlow, a sea captain who helps Jim after his fall from grace. Within his
narration, other characters also tell their own stories and express their own
opinions. By this method the reader is presented with events seen from
different viewpoints allowing us to gain a fully rounded portrait of Lord Jim.
However, on publication not all readers
were enamoured by the novel. Conrad records in his Author’s Note to the 1917 edition that
an Italian lady had observed that ‘It is so morbid’. Certainly, it is gloomy,
as are most of his works, as he tries in fiction to come to terms with the
cruelties of life. In Lord Jim, Conrad’s deep pessimism is clear. As in
a Greek tragedy the mistakes of the past follow men like a curse and can never
be fully repaired because, as Conrad asserts, that is the way things are.
When Marlow parts from Jim for the last
time, his boat pulls away from the shore to leave Jim on the sand alone, with
the night coming:
‘The twilight was ebbing fast from the sky
above his head…he himself appeared no bigger than a child – then only a speck,
a tiny white speck, that seemed to catch all the light left in a darkened
world.’
The implication is clear. Conrad is saying that world is dark and full of corruption, but if one person can live his life in the light, then there is some hope for humanity.
There have been two films based on Lord
Jim. The first, a reasonable attempt to bring the book to the screen, was a
silent version in 1925, directed by Victor Fleming.
The second movie appeared in 1965 starring Peter O’Toole, who also acted as one of the producers. James Mason was Marlow. The screenplay written by the director Richard Brooks included elements of Conrad’s novel but was far from faithful to the tone and message of the original. One reviewer observed that ‘Brooks teetered between making a full-blooded, no-holds barred adventure yarn and the psychological study that Conrad wrote.’ Bosley Crowther of the New York Times called it a ‘big, gaudy clanging color film’ that ‘misses being either Conrad or sheer entertainment cinema.’
So, the advice would be stick to the book. It is not an easy read and certainly the early chapters are slow and somewhat ponderous, but as the novel gets into its stride, it blossoms and grows into a great work of literature.
Image: The Joseph Conrad monument in Gdynia, Poland, which includes a quote from Lord Jim Credit: Martin Lindsay / Alamy Stock Photo