On The Pathologic Urban Personality In Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent

Joseph Conrad is a famous British novelist in Edwardian Age. He has many years ofsailing experience and likes to take the ocean and the jungle as the writing background toexplore the fate of mankind and spiritual crisis during the era of imperialism. The SecretAgent is Conrad’s first novel which takes the city as the background to reveal the Londonsociety at the turn of the century. Henry James praised that the wide of Conrad’s artisticvision “no one can surpass”. F.R.Levis classified Conrad as one of the British “greattradition” and spoke highly of The Secret Agent as one of Conrad’s “perfect” and classicworks.Urban Personality is a concept which is highlighted by the German sociologist GeorgSimmel in his “Metropolis and Mental Life”. Simmel holds that there is “type of urbanhuman” in “morbid urban space”. Modern urbanites have a strong feeling of nerve stimulation,which makes them respond to emotion slowly and takes a practical attitude to theinterpersonal relationships. They contact with each other through the brain rather than heart,which is in stark contrast to rural community intimate relationships. This kind of urbanpersonality does not only reveal the character of urban space on the impact of urban humanbehavior, but shows the city where people surrounded by strangers in the world. Such humanpsychological loneliness and alienation are the disease of urban society, and may develop intocultural crisis and social crisis of the whole society. Simmel’s views on urban personality donot only promote the study of urban sociology, but also provide a new perspective for thedeepening of literary studies.This thesis uses the concept of “urban personality”, closely relevant to three key wordsi.e.“apathetic”,“calculating”, and “insane”, using three urbanites which symbolize threeurban personalities as the research object, to explore the urban experience actually being feltby the English people during the transitional period, and further delineates the socialcondition of that time. The first chapter analyzes Verloc’s apathetic personality reflected inthe bureaucratic urban space. As a multiple-faced agent, Verloc is linked to different interestgroups of the urban society and lacks concern about family and others. His indifference isclosely linked to the bureaucrats’ urban society in which urbanites lack of moral sense, lack of compassion and tries to evade the moral responsibility of the cruel reality. The second chapterdiscusses Winnie’s calculating personality reflected in the Monetized urban space. Winnie is asimple girl. Under the influence of urban social values, in order to ensure the safety ofwidowed mother and weak brother, she takes her marriage as a commodity to sell to Verloc.The lack of family values and defense of self-interest reflect the women’s dilemma in thesociety. Chapter three focuses on the Professor’s insane personality reflected in the isolatedurban space. Professor is a unique anarchist who attempts to subvert the social order, but helacks of cooperation with other anarchists. He gets lost in his own spiritual labyrinth becausehe can’t find a sense of belonging in the city. He embodies the conflict between ideal andreality, a reflection of desire to communicate with others. The concluding part of the articleillustrates the relationship between people who become materialistic and commercial in theprocess of urbanization. Conrad reveals the life of the city deeply and he also expresses hisanxiety and reflection of the spiritual plight of the urbanites.