Deep fellowship: homosexuality and male bonding in the life and fiction of Joseph Conrad.

Conrad's biography reveals only peripheral, though suggestive, awareness of homosexuality. His fiction, however, shows a continuing concern with some underlying features of female and male homosexuality. Suggestions of a positive view of homoerotic relations can be discerned in the strong works of his early career, specifically Lord Jim and "The Secret Sharer." The later novels and stories, usually characterized as sentimental and conventional, dramatize an overt fear of homosexuality consistent with Conrad's hostile reaction to the Casement revelations. Chance features an evil lesbian, Victory an equally destructive homosexual male. Only the autobiographical A Shadow Line shows a return to the earlier positive attitude toward male bonding with sexual overtones. Scholars have been reluctant to notice these concerns, since Conrad is considered a "man's" writer.