What the Country Doctor “did not see”: The Limits of the Imagination in “Amy Foster”

OVER THE PAST fifteen years Conrad's "Amy Foster" (1901) has achieved some prominence among critics for a variety of reasons. Its different versions (Fraser 1988), its impressionist aspects (Epstein 1991), its dialogic and intercultural dimensions (Krajka 1990; Carabine 1992), its nature as "a colonialist story in reverse" (Ruppel 1996: 126), and its exploration of the trauma of "culture shock" (Finkelstein 2000; Shaffer 2000) have all garnered critical attention. In spite of their different foci these readings share the assumption that either Yanko or Amy or both are at the story's centre. Myrtle Hooper (1996), while not denying the protagonists' centrality, focuses on the way in which Kennedy, the principal I-narrator, shapes his narrative and thereby invites the collusion of his listener-visitor, the nameless frame-narrator, and male readers and critics. This interesting thesis is worth contesting as well as expanding on.