The Dynamic Character of Winne Verloc in Joseph Conrad’s “The Secret Agent”

Throughout the reading and discussion of Joseph Conrad’s “The Secret Agent”, most readers are immediately drawn to the dynamic character of Winne Verloc; who is seemingly portrayed as the protagonist’s — or antagonist’s depending on one’s opinion — loving and obedient wife. However, as audiences know now, appearances aren’t everything in the Verloc household.

As events of the story unfold, Winne undergoes a rather dramatic and alarming character transformation. In the start of the first chapter, she’s happily and dutifully tending to her husband’s store; skip a few hundred pages to the very conclusion, she commits suicide escaping the hangman’s noose for the same husband’s murder. While the motivation behind her madness is understood, there’s a pivotal moment in the novel between the events of Verloc’s death and, ultimately, her realization of the magnitude what she’s done. As such, this essay will focus on a short section of the novel in which not only emphasizes Winnie’s frame of mind but skillfully relates back to the larger motivations and themes of this story.

The section in question begins on the very last page of Chapter 11, where Winne has just violently stabbed her husband to death. “Mrs. Verloc had let go of the knife” the passage begins, “…her extraordinary resemblance to her late brother had faded, had become very ordinary now.” (Cite) This “resemblance” points back to a section prior, where Mrs. Verloc, while advancing towards her husband —knife in hand — appears to look eerily similar to her late brother, “even to the droop of the lower lip…to the slight divergence of the eyes.” This indicates that Winne isn’t killing her husband out of spite, it’s out of pure and unfiltered revenge. Essentially, the soul of Stevie symbolically ‘possesses’ her to commit the act, and once the object of their aggression and pain — Verloc — is dead, Winne is now suddenly herself again; hence her resemblance to Stevie reverting back to “ordinary”. This beginning line can support the novel’s themes of loyalty; and how far one is willing to sacrifice prove their own. Mr. Verloc wanted to prove his loyalty to his foreign employers, so he gave up Stevie as a sacrificial lamb. In return, it was Mrs. Verloc’s devotion to her brother that resulted in her husband’s death. Now, as she “let(s) go of the knife”, Winnie’s loyalty to her brother has never been proven stronger; she’s committed the ultimate sin in his name.

Another intriguing characteristic about this section that all tension seems to immediately evaporate out of the situation. A few sentences ago the reader was on edge; Winnie grabs the knife with murderous intention. You would expect to read about Verloc’s blood flying everywhere as Winnie frantically stabs him, immediately followed by the police breaking down the front-door waving handcuffs. After all, it’s murder. However, the second sentence immediately begins with “She Winnie drew a deep breath, the first easy breath since Chief Inspector Heat had exhibited to her the labelled piece of Stevie’s overcoat”. The structure of this sentence makes it so after all that enormous tension, the reader is forced to pause, and take a deep breath too. It’s that one pause that truly gives the reader time grasp the situation at hand. The word “easy” in “easy breath” is also an interesting word choice by Ford. The beauty of it is that it’s deliberate.

To summarize, the sentence says that this is her first real breath after being told of Stevie’s death. One would think that Winnie would be unable to breathe after committing murder, but she is. It’s “easy” to breathe because the source of her pain is gone. It’s the outpouring of all those emotions, all put into the swing of the knife, that makes it “easy” to breathe. In this moment, it’s pure and sweet release for Winnie.