Other editions of book Chance by Joseph Conrad, Fiction, Classics

Chance is a classic Joseph Conrad adventure novel that tells the story of Flora De Barral, daughter of the Great De Barral, a monumental swindler, and her love for the sea captain who married her. Marlow tells the story in his usual quiet manner which is so dramatic under the quiet, and shows Chance the master hand directing and interfering at any moment. Chance is narrated by Conrad's regular narrator, Charles Marlow, but is characterised by a complex, nested narrative in which different narrators take up the story at different points. The novel is also unusual among its author's works for its focus on a female character: the heroine, Flora de Barral. The narrators describe and attempt to interpret various episodes in the life of Miss de Barral, the daughter of a convicted swindler named Smith de Barral (though this character is famous in the world of the novel as a criminal, he may, at least at first, have been merely an incompetent banker). Miss de Barral leads a sheltered life while her father is prosperous, then must rely on the generosity of others, who resent her or have agendas for her, before she escapes by marrying one Captain Anthony. Much of the book involves the musing of the various narrators over what she and the Captain expected from this union, and what they actually got from it. When her father is released from prison, he joins them on ship, and the book heads towards its denouement. Chance opened a path to commercial success for Conrad after years of slow progress and obscurity. This success could be measured by the record sale of the book in 1914, which outsold all his previous publications and shot him to fame. Breaking away from the tradition, Chance dealt with social issues surrounding feminism and financial speculation enacted by Mrs. Fyne and Flora de Barral, as presented by the narrators. The storyline of the novel oscillates between human-will and activity juxtaposed with an apathetic force that can nullify the importance of human action. The complex style of Conrad's narrative in this novel invited widespread criticisms from peers and readers alike.

Events revolve around the daughter of a bankrupt magnate. She is viciously attacked by her disappointed governess, who has her marriage plans for her father, and Flora takes with her the belief that she is unattractive. Psychological history that keeps the reader from beginning to end. Soon, Flora discovers that even the staff does not love her, and her situation is complicated by the selfish indignation of her father against her attachment to Anthony.

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.The red tint of his clear-cut face with trim short black whiskers under a cap of curly iron-grey hair was the only warm spot in the dinginess of that room cooled by the cheerless tablecloth. We knew him already by sight as the owner of a little five-ton cutter, which he sailed alone apparently, a fellow yachtsman in the unpretending band of fanatics who cruise at the mouth of the Thames. But the first time he addressed the waiter sharply as ‘steward’ we knew him at once for a sailor as well as a yachtsman.Presently he had occasion to reprove that same waiter for the slovenly manner in which the dinner was served. He did it with considerable energy and then turned to us.“If we at sea,” he declared, “went about our work as people ashore high and low go about theirs we should never make a living. No one would employ us. And moreover no ship navigated and sailed in the happy-go-lucky manner people conduct their business on shore would ever arrive into port.”

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Chance tells the story of Flora de Barral, the vulnerable abandoned daughter of a bankrupt tycoon, who struggles to achieve dignity and happiness; 'no consideration, no delicacy, no tenderness, no scruples should stand in the way of a woman ... from taking the shortest cut towards securing for herself the easiest possible existence.’ It is narrated by different narrators, including Conrad's regular narrator, Charles Marlow, who describe and attempt to interpret various episodes in Flora’s life and is the only book to focus on a female character.

CONRAD, Joseph (Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski) (1857-1924), was born of Polish parents in the Russian-dominated Ukraine. His father political opinions caused the family to be exiled to Volagda, in northern Russia, where Conrad´s mother died when he was 7. His father also died after their return to Poland, and Conrad went to live with his uncle, Tadeusz Bobrowski, who had an enormous influence in his life. From an early age he began the career as a sailor, and in 1874 he went to Marseilles. In 1886 he became a British subject and a master mariner. In 1894, after twenty years at sea, he settled in England and devoted himself to writing in English, his third language. Towards the end of his literary career, Conrad was well established as one of the leading Modernists; a decline of interest in the 1930s was followed by increasing scholarly and critical attention. Today, Conrad is placed among the very great novelists in English language.“A Personal Record” (1912), is Conrad´s autobiography.