|
Editorial Review Product Description
I believe he had seen us out of the window coming off to dine in the dinghy of a fourteen-ton yawl belonging to Marlow my host and skipper. We helped the boy we had with us to haul the boat up on the landing-stage before we went up to the riverside inn, where we found our new acquaintance eating his dinner in dignified loneliness at the head of a long table, white and inhospitable like a snow bank. ... Read more Customer Reviews (8) 
A Series of Misdirections
Chance contains many of the themes found in Conrad's more critically acclaimed work: the role of womanhood in the Empire (HOD), the pressure of external events on personal relations, (The Secret Agent), the psychological struggle for dominance as well, often found in Conrad's shorter sea tales, but where Chance succeeds is in its narrative misdirection geared toward the reader. We at first assume that the novel will settle on some misadventure that is flashed back by Powell, and then we discover Marlow at the table, and discover it with a sinking feeling, and then get sucked into a series of narratives within narratives, a technique for which Modernism owes Conrad a great debt. We have the unnamed narrator who tries to contain Marlow, and Marlow who has to contain the Fynes, who have to contain Flora de Barral and her comically dim-witted father, whose narrow intelligence later becomes monstrous toward the novel's end; but this multi-layered technique is also the story's greatest weakness. Conrad weighs even minor characters down with a wee bit too much pressure: One expects a consequence from the second Mr. Powell and Flora's embittered governess, a consequence that never quite materializes given the effort Conrad puts into their backstories. It is mildly anti-climatic, and had it been shorter would have amounted to less labor for the amusingly frustrated spectators we are invited to be as Flora moves through her various stages of despair and then making terms with the world. The final picture we have of her, as a virtual goddess about to be united with the salt of the earth, relieves the burden the faithful reader carries along.
As it says in the Title....
A chance meeting with a Mr Powell leads Marlow to recollect his chance connections To the Feins-and Mrs Feins' brother Captain Anthony ; his chance meeting with Flora De Barrel,daughter of a disgraced financier,and their elopement on Anthonys ship.
Chance occurances and happenings connect lifes machinations according to Conrad, and this story unfolds gracefully on such chances ,with the proceedings kept in witty check by Marlows narration.
Conrad is the master of descriptive, meticulously detailed story telling and 'Chance' is no exception to this rule. Perhaps a little over long, and your sympathies wax and wane at times, but a great tale written in a style and manner few in the past-and possibly none today-could match and master,
Confusing and verbose narrative: Conrad past his best
It is paradoxical that Conrad's most successful work at the time of its publishing should also be the least satisfactory of his major works. Narrated largely by Conrad's alter ego Marlow it is the story of young Flora de Barral who is torn emotionally between her imprisoned financier father (who bears a strong resemblance to Trollope's Augustus Melmotte) and Captain Anthony, the respected brother of her Feminist guardian Mrs Fyne. Written during the suffragette era Conrad attempts to address directly the issue of feminism but the prejudices of the time (Victorian/Edwardian) and his origins (Polish) act as impediments to his impartiality. Though I feel that it is a judgment based on today's standards to describe Marlow's narrative as misogynistic, it does at times make uncomfortable reading: `...Mrs Fyne did not want women to be women. Her theory was that they should turn themselves into unscrupulous sexless nuisances'. As such it acts as unwitting historical testimony to male attitudes of Conrad's background at that time.
Ostensibly a tale of doomed love Chance is an overlong and confusing nested narrative that nevertheless is a four-star work because it is a fine story written in a beautiful, dignified English that has long since been abandoned for a prose that is dull and functional or pompous and overblown. If you are a Conrad fan like me and you wish to `complete the set' then it is an interesting diversion for that great author, though, not surprisingly, the best passages are on board The Ferndale. If you are new to Conrad then I don't recommend this as a starter. Instead go for any of his well-known works which are all readily available.
Conrad's Strangest Triumph
So well-crafted, so engaging, so powerfully written - it's hard believing "Chance" was written by Joseph Conrad. Not that Conrad didn't write great books, just that nothing in "Lord Jim," "Heart Of Darkness," or the rest of his tough, unsettling oeuvre prepares you for the wry warmth and hidden sunlight of "Chance."
Well, you do have Marlow again. The narrator of "Jim" and "Darkness" is back here telling another story about people he doesn't actually know first-hand. This time the central character is young Flora de Barral, set adrift in England by her father's scandal-plagued financiering. Haunted and helpless, her wide blue eyes giving her the look of "a forsaken elf," Flora takes what comes in life, seemingly unable to function for herself. Can she find her own way? Will she become ruthless if she tries?
All this may sound precious and twee, very much in the style of period romances more suited to Henry James than what you expect from the shamelessly macho Conrad, with his damned souls sailing heedless into typhoons. Yet Conrad makes this odd Merchant-Ivory production work by making you care for Flora in a way that draws you in more deeply than even the classic "Lord Jim" ever did. "Jim" was a philosophical novel; "Chance" is a uniquely intuitive one, more about feelings than ideas, yet quite brilliant in its concept all the same.
Published in 1913, one year before World War I would change forever the genteel world it so painstakingly describes, "Chance" was the one book by Conrad that clicked with readers in his own lifetime. It's been disregarded since, as modern readers embrace more dour Conrad fare like "The Secret Agent" and "Nostromo."
It's our generation's loss. Missing "Chance" is missing the other side of Conrad, the bleak nihilist discovering for once "the precise workmanship of chance, fate, providence, call it what you will." Other Conrad books feature broken-up narratives and odd framing devices, but the structural convolutions in "Chance" actually propel the story rather than hold it back.
Marlow's narration is a marvel of storytelling economy, carrying you across windswept moors and the high seas, not to mention a source of much dry wit as the rather mysterious misogynist fires many shots across the bow of womankind. "Mainly I resent that pretence of winding us around their dear little fingers, as of right," he snorts.
Is Flora exhibit A in this case against? Certainly she winds the helplessly infatuated Captain Anthony around her finger, despite her apparent total lack of reciprocal devotion. Flora does love, only it is in a flawed way, for her crabbed, corrupt father who believes the two of them too good for the rest of the world. Yet love can be a form of redemption despite itself.
Women, Conrad writes, can be fiendish and dumb, yet they are "never dense." "There is in woman always, somewhere, a spring." Realizing that spring here is at the heart of "Chance," and makes for Conrad's strangest triumph, the one book of his that not only makes you feel smarter for reading it, but happy to be alive.
An obscure gem from one of history's greatest writers
My first Conrad read was Victory, and I have been hooked ever since.I chose Chance because it was Conrad's first commercial success, and I was curious to see what the public liked better than so many other great novels such as Lord Jim.As other reviewers have suggested, the ending must have been the difference.There is far more sweet than bitter, and it's usually the other way around in his books, especially the love stories.I suspect we may learn more from sad stories than from happy ones, but in any event, Chance is not without pain and suffering.As the capable narrator Marlowe repeatedly emphasizes, the novel's heroine, Flora, leads a difficult life. Her father is one of the great villans in literature.He really steals show from Marlowe--well, almost.
What I like most about Conrad's use of the narrator, particularly in Chance, is his role as an interpreter.In most novels, the reader must examine the story itself for the life lessons Conrad so uniquely presents.Marlowe enables Conrad to speak more directly to the reader, and I found him doing so more in Chance than in Lord Jim.There are a few arguably gratutious digressions--one about the differences between men and women comes to mind--but that's Marlowe.
The bottom line: if in reading Lord Jim, you really enjoyed Marlowe's character, you will love the extra depth and insight Chance provides.If you love Conrad, then I expect you will find this to be one his most enjoyable books.And, if you have never read Conrad, but are curious, this is an excellent novel to start with, for it cannot be sterotyped as a South Seas adventure novel full of Pacific atmosphere and nautical terms.
... Read more |
