Affirming personal values: The significance of the language teacher in Under Western Eyes

Abstract

It may be that the fundamental importance of Under Western Eyes (1911), the last of Conrad’s major political novels, is in its rejection of political commitment in favour of personal relationships and private commitments. Under Western Eyes needs to be considered as a dialectical novel whose central agon is a conflict between political and personal values. As with Lord Jim, Under Western Eyes has generally been examined as if it were a completed and static object, rather than as a dynamic process continually changing shape as it moves to its conclusion. Yet a dialectical novel, like a sophisticated argument, cannot be summarised by merely looking at its conclusion or by equating the set speech of a character with the meaning of the novel. Under Western Eyes deliberately begins with a self-deprecating, almost bathetic narrator, who seems to be imperceptive and obtuse. But the action of the novel gradually establishes his perceptivity, morality, and humanity, until he becomes a centre of value within the novel.