Women-Boat

The narrator seems to hold a close, intimate relationship with his ship. Almost like a lover. The ship is personified as a woman. Instead of referring to the ship as “it” Joseph Conrad uses “she”. The ship is the narrator’s companion.

Eighteen months on a boat leaves no alternative but to bond with “her”. Conrad exposes the feelings of the captain, dealing with himself, with the people on board and the new discovery of anchored women-boat. This affection to the ships implies, obviously, their role in the novel. As the back cover of the book says “In the steaming jungles of the Congo or the vast reaches of the sea, it is the man’s capacity for good and for evil that is his enduring theme.” The “jungles of the Congo” have not been personified yet so I care more for the sea and with it the women-boats.

First of all why would a boat be feminine and not masculine? I would have classified a boat as masculine: tough, big, precise, and sharp-formed. A flower is feminine: delicate, imprecise, irregularly shaped, but not a boat. For the narrator it would make no sense to be so related to the ship if it were masculine, unless he were gay which is unusual. In his loneliness, as he stated twice in one page: “And then I was alone with my ship,” and “At that moment I was alone in her decks.” (p. 20) His desired companion must be feminine. And so far his crew and the new comer swimmer murderer have not fulfilled his desires.