SOURCE: Hooper, Myrtle. “‘Oh, I Hope He Won't Talk’¹: Narrative and Silence in ‘Amy Foster.’” The Conradian 21, no. 2 (autumn 1996): 51-64.

In the following essay, Hooper explores the function of the frame narrator and the role of silence in “Amy Foster.”

On first reading “Amy Foster” I found it puzzling that Conrad had chosen to name his story after ‘the woman’ and not ‘the man’, since so much of his imaginative interest seemed to be vested in the history of Yanko Gooral, alien washed up on the shores of English civilisation. In this respect, the story offers an interesting counterpoint to the situation in Heart of Darkness, in which an English narrator recounts his story of alien experiences on an English ship riding at anchor on an English river. Of course, it is expressive of both Conrad's alienation and his irony that the experiences of English civilisation should be...