“What could words do to her for good or evil in the face of her fixed idea?”
(Conrad 206)

“It was as though he had been trying to fit all the words he could remember to his sentiments in order to get some sort of corresponding idea” (Conrad 142)

“To break up the superstition and worship of legality should be our aim”
(Conrad 61)

In Conrad’s The Secret Agent, ideas (specifically the coded words employed to inscribe them) are never fixed, inflexible, or wholly consistent, despite the persistently systemized effort of the Forces of Law to codify their meanings thru repetition and projected conventional signification. Why do these agents of Law & Order compulsively repeat and in response to whom or what? Moreover, what do these coded words in their specificity and yet- always-already deferred multiplicity of meaning -convey to the reader about Conrad’s thematic intentions? I contend that the coding of certain words is an appropriate and necessary thematic mechanism in Conrad’s text. Specifically, the necessity of coding represents a sustained dialectic, reflected (and necessitated by) the novel’s socio-historical turn-of-the-century London setting/atmosphere and embedded within the microscopic-level of the text itself: showcasing a semiotic engagement with the characters representing the imminent Forces of Anarchy , likewise echoing coded repetitions and externally manifested signs in ways that cumulatively complicate and interrogate the assumptions of status-quo knowingness (embodied by the Forces of Law); disentangling duplicitous signification in an unfolding of re-coding of supposedly fixed conventional understandings of certain words linked to two principal thematic considerations: (1) Domesticity as Protected/Protecting Ideal & (2) Secrecy as (re-)Assurance of Certainty of Justice/Justness

The atmosphere of the London suffusing and enclosing the novel’s setting is incessantly claustrophobic (“ [an] immensity of greasy slime and damp plaster…enveloped, oppressed, penetrated, choked, and suffocated…” (Conrad 124)), morbid (“Night…the sinister, noisy, hopeless, and rowdy night…” (Conrad 132)), and tangibly viscous, as if almost on the verge of stasis, like a “descent into a slimy aquarium from which the water had been run off”(Conrad 122)). The surrounding environment persisting in its “murky, gloomy dampness” (Conrad 122), however, is less distressing compared to its innumerable inhabitants, referred to ominously as a “mass of mankind” (Conrad 69) and sinisterly as an “invincible multitude” (Conrad 80). This is a massive and unwieldy populace whose sheer numbers (“numerous like locust”) alone constitute or at least appear threatening to the dyadic Forces of Law and Anarchy. This is the coded ‘multitude’
The ‘multitude’ performs its function as a unifying coded word (it codes for the essential necessity of the code), a specter (a reminder of uneasiness, disquiet, suspicion, real or imagined secrets) that threatens merely by its conspicuous omnipresence to overwhelm and foil plots . It is a foreboding backdrop, but also functions as a hindrance to the primary objective of coding, namely- the very possibility of disentangling duplicitous meaning and contradictory signs that conceal the motives of self-preservation and ambition that define the agents of the dyadic Forces operating under the pretense of ‘secrets’ as protective of and protecting the social order. Mr. Verloc, the eponymous Secret Agent, is acutely ill-at-ease with environment of the ‘multitude’, he looks out “a fragile film of glass” (an inherently tenuous separation) and observes that “stretched between him” (a formative obstacle, a ‘multitude’ personified by its environment that is threatening in the absence of any pretense) an “enormity of cold, black, wet, muddy, inhospitable accumulation of bricks, slates, and stones, things themselves unlovely and unfriendly to man” (Conrad 47). Nothing in the vast ‘multitude’ conveys any possibility of social distinction or an elevated sense of purpose that the Forces of Law & Anarchy mutually conspire to achieve for themselves ; the ‘multitude’ offers only “monotonous streets and unknown names” (Conrad 247). The ‘multitude’ never just signifying a population, but rather commenting on the specific threatening population foregrounding the novel. In the sheer inconceivability of its size, the ‘multitude’ codes for chaos, forebodes a revelatory bomb that will detonate a self-awareness of the fundamental disingenuousness of the coded secret playing out in the clash between the Forces of Law & Anarchy, a pretense founded on assumptions that speak to the thematic concerns of Domesticity as Protected/Protecting Ideal & Secrecy as (re-) Assurance of Justice/Justness

The ‘multitude’ foreshadows the unraveling of the veil of secrecy kept dormant and unnoticed because in its outwardly displays (affections, gestures) it perfectly conforms to conventional expectations and signs indicative of the status quo, in which coded words are capable of deceiving the very people who employ them to deceive, when it becomes necessary for their sense of self-preservation to re-define themselves through words and signs they assume are fixed in meaning, hence Winnie Verloc once broken of the spell of Domesticity as Ideal “imagined her incoherence to be clearness itself” and selectively hears “the disjointed phrases completed only in her thoughts”, enabling the appearance of “a full confession” in which meaning is fixed and protected from false (albeit perhaps comforting) distortions, but alas, a lifetime of coding for Domesticity as Ideal may be psychologically impossible to shake and thus Winnie still looks for and finds a “special meaning to every sentence spoken” that unfortunately continues to be misread as she grasps futilely at a “knowledge [that} did not in the least resemble her own” (Conrad 232)

Before the coded meanings of ‘whispers and ‘smiles’ are extrapolated and explored, it is germane to highlight moments in the text where Conrad inserts tantalizing clues about what a semiotic-level analysis suggests and informed by this atomizing interpretative framework investigate the thematic functionality and appropriateness of coding. Conrad gives us at least two indications of how the repetition of certain words (used most commonly as descriptive/characterizing gesture), which I call coded, functions as an unfolding reveal (via repetition and the multiplication of potential signification) of his thematic intentions. The closest description of the code in action occurs towards the end of the novel filtered thru an internal monologue of Mr. Verloc grappling with his desire, yet knowing the impossibility of revealing to his wife the true nature and consequences of his dealings as a secret agent (“the invaluable Secret Agent” (Conrad 236)) which has placed him in a colliding center of “conspiracies of fatal destiny” or, as I contend- at the terminating point of a system of coded dealings and duplicitous signifiers moving betwixt the Forces of Laws and the Forces of Anarchy whose true intentions remain still mysterious (secret) even to him: “…he himself felt but vaguely…that a notion grows in a mind sometimes till it acquires an outward existence, an independent power of its own, and even a suggestive voice?” (Conrad 196). The mechanism of coded words in the text consists precisely in this ability of the code to act as a “suggestive voice?”, a form of almost-but-not-quite authorial intrusion, informing the reader gradually (hintingly) of Conrad’s intended themes. An additional key to the revelatory role of coded words is provide thru Mrs. Winnie Verloc, who notably “feeling not quite herself” (almost-but-not-quite Conrad intruding on his text?) is stricken by (note the use of passive voice) the idea “ born upon with some force that a simple sentence may hold several diverse meanings-mostly disagreeable” (Conrad 147 ). Later, recalling a memory that serves to frame her origin in Domesticity, Mrs. Verloc is said to receive “the word again in a ghostly fashion”. Words themselves return repeatedly, are received by (“born upon”) these characters as vessels of thematic meaning, demanding re-evaluation, hinting at “disagreeable” (we can assume unflattering, threatening to their vanity/need for self-preservation) secrets to be subsequently revealed in that “ghostly fashion” of the code. Furthermore, as supplement to examples just given of the instances wherein Conrad to approaches an explicit description of the code in action, we are additionally treated to an explication of the code as a necessary thematic device. Like the descriptions of the code in action, the following appears towards the end of the novel articulated once again in a scene involving Mrs. Verloc’s, notably just prior to the anarchist Ossipon’s discovery of Mr. Verloc’s supine corpse. Mrs. Verloc is certain that Ossipon can read the signs; that he knows that she has murdered her husband, but it is Ossipon’s response to her crazed assertion of certainty and knowingness (“You guessed what I had to do!”’) that gives us a outline of the necessity of the code as an exposing thematic mechanism, foreshadowing the falseness of literal/conventional meanings thru recurrence and accumulation of coded words capable of oscillating between the modest suggestion of multiplied meaning and the radical implication of incompatible meanings : “There were suggestions of triumph, relief, gratitude in the indefinable tone of these words. It engrossed the whole attention of Ossipon to the detriment of mere literal sense” (Conrad 228). Words in the “literal sense” act as a false lacuna for secret meanings and motivations to slip by unawares, while the code re-asserts itself to point of becoming threatening; paralleling the novel’s anti-climatic centerpiece explosion the coded words collectively represent a reconfigured, figurative explosion of duplicitous meanings conspicuously omnipresent under the veneer of semantic convention

Keeping in the mind the coded backdrop of the ‘multitude’ that promises a revelatory chaos and unifies the codes, I shift into an overview of those characters prefigured frequently as ‘smiling’ and who speak in ‘whispers’ and commence by posing two formative questions: (1) What do ‘smiling’ and ‘whispers’ typically connote or signify? & (2) And in what revealing and unexpected ways, do these smiling and whispering characters re-code and amplify conventional signifiers as maximally engaged thematic markers of meaning? The gesture of the ‘smile’ is typically an unambiguously positive sign capable of conveying, amongst other states- good intentions, general amiability, sincerity, and empathy. Yet rarely in the strategic deployment and arrangement of the coded ‘smile’ around the characters do we find anything genuine or completely free of ulterior motives, in actuality, when characters ‘smile’ the reader is confronted with accepting unconventional and counterintuitive meanings indicative of insincerity, condescension, vanity, and personal ambition. The ‘smile’ is nearly always a smile of self-awareness, conscious of its own falsity and all-encompassing deceptiveness

Noteworthy is that the coded ‘smile’ occurs amongst descriptions of anarchists and representatives of the law, albeit with slightly different, although mutually reinforcing coded meanings. Chief Inspector Heat, for instance, representative of the Forces of Law, is cautious, skeptical in his smiling. His ‘smiling’ is a type of affected smile, a social nicety extended in faux-sympathy, but absolutely befitting a man of his social station and influence, lest we forget-“For Chief Inspector Heat was a servant of justice” (Conrad 166). On a single page he is described variously as “without exactly looking at Mrs. Verloc, answered only by a faint and peculiar smile” and perfunctorily offering “again a silent smile” and only when he obtains certainty of his control and command of a situation does he display his knowingness: “he smiled the smile of old if distant acquaintance…”(Conrad 163). As a figure of the Law, his ‘smiles’ always reveal the disingenuousness of the smile as pure gesture or alternatively smug satisfaction in knowingness . Similarly, these codes of disingenuous and smug satisfaction occur in the Assistant Commission who, in an example of the former is described as having “an amused smile” (Conrad 116) and indicative of the latter coding: “Toodles looked so thunderstruck that the Assistant Commissioner smiled faintly” (Conrad 178)

Contrarily, figures of the anarchist faction re-code the ‘smile’ more selectively and occasionally with greater relish as consequence of temperament. The “volatile and revolutionary Toodles” is seen “smiling from a distance with a friendly buoyancy” (Conrad 176), but, of course, he only does so because he is in the presence of his anarchist peers. Generally, the anarchist share an “immense contempt for the English police” and thus a suspiciousness about the smile as coded smugness, but when they feel they have the upper hand on the Forces of Law the instantiations of the coded ‘smile’ become more difficult to de-code (from the perspective of the Forces of the Law); instances of “ smiling perplexity”, further complicated by recapitulation of the smile image as not explicitly a smile, but suggestive of one: “displaying a dimple in each clean-shaven cheek” (Conrad 184). Sometimes the anarchists (in conscientious defiance) are given only semi-smiles -“Karl Yundt giggled grimly, with a faint black grimace of a toothless mouth” (Conrad 36). In other instances, figures like The Professor make a point of expressly not-smiling: “the dignity of unsmiling adoption” (Conrad 119). By presenting smiles as half-hearted, suggestive, or expressly not-smiling, the Anarchists tacitly (even if reluctantly) participate in a coded exchange of gesture with the figures of the Law that reinforce the respective factions sense of implicit justness and the righteousness of their ambition signified by the knowing smile

And why are certain characters always whispering? Do they whisper to preserve secrets? Is a necessity to secrecy that includes an impulse to whisper present and furthermore does this necessity extend even to the secrets the characters wish to conceal from themselves? Finally, what secrets do the figures of the ‘multitude’ whisper? In my estimation, the coded ‘whisper’ functions as a signifier of the more conventional ‘secrets’ and secret-keepers and yet further re-code for moments of personal revelation of ‘secrets’ formerly unspeakable, inconceivable, surprising, and in the central figure of domesticity (e.g. Winnie Verloc) serve as emblematic of the constitutionally ‘incurious’

In a rare scene featuring a figure of the ‘multitude’, a cabby interacts with the ‘peculiar’ and sensitive boy (fated-to-be martyred) Stevie in a series of whispered truths pertaining the cruelty and injustice of the world. The cabby “delivering himself thus in a stern whisper, strained almost to extinction” (Conrad 131) criticizes the boy’s objections to his flogging of the horses. He epitomizes the expected world-weary, working class figure that one fully expects to find amongst the multitude: “I am a night cabby, I am,” he whispered, with a sort of boastful exasperation” (Conrad 138). Seemingly eager to let Stevie in on his own personal coded knowingness of unpleasant, but necessary truisms, the Cabby confines his utterances exclusive to the whisper-“added in his mysterious whisper: “This ain’t an easy world”’ (Conrad 138), prodding and urging Stevie towards acceptance of a network of coded, but self-evident propositions concerning the unavoidability of unjustness from his position amongst the multitude: “Come on,” he whispered secretly’’(Conrad 139)
In oppositional contrast, sheltered by the fortifications of the alleged protection afforded by her existence atop her throne of domesticity, Winnie Verloc is characterized as pathological unquestioning and “almost disdainful {in her lack of} curiosity…Curiosity being one of the forms of self-revelation, a systematically incurious person remains always partly mysterious” (Conrad 195). She is not one inclined to whispering, for what secrets are visible or possible to an individual shielded from signs of coding, or whatever exists beneath surfaces, concealed? In her domestic position, secrets are incapable of penetration: “Thus she lingered. Not a whisper reached them from the outside world” (Conrad 160). Mrs. Verloc is repeatedly characterized as “a person disinclined to look under the surface of things” (Conrad 152) and moreover (perhaps more tellingly) disengaged from words themselves: “Mrs. Verloc was woman of singularly few words, either for public or private use” (Conrad 199) . Yet in other important ways, Mrs. Verloc is heavily coded and constrained by her domain of domesticity, compulsively repeating claims of legitimacy and genuineness: “A genuine wife and a genuinely, respectably, marital relation…the respectable bond…Yes, a genuine wife. And the victim was a genuine brother-in-law. From a certain point of view we are here in the presence of a domestic drama” (Conrad 182). However, once that domain is penetrated and challenged by the revelation of Stevie’s unknowing role as anarchist martyr and her horror at her husband’s complacency in the tragedy, ‘whispers’ dominate her wild, all-too-knowing, utterances: “I’ve heard of him,” whispered uneasily Mr. Verloc, darting a wild glance at the door” (Conrad 164); “And do you know what my trouble is?” she whispered with strange intensity” (Conrad 225); “she whispered, then raised her head, and staggered backward a little” (Conrad 170). ‘Whispers’ emerge re-coded as revelatory and impassioned (“full of scorn and rage” (Conrad 266)) as the false idea of Domesticity disintegrates taking along with it Mrs. Verloc entire sense of personal identity that nevertheless cannot be denied-‘“Yes,” she whispered, invisible”’ (Conrad 237). Thus, “that whispered statement” takes on “superhuman vehemence” that leave the anarchist Ossipon (not immune or unfamiliar to whispered secrets) “completely stunned”(Conrad 227) in their revelatory power. In the end, she exhausts the possible coding meanings of the ‘whisper’ as revelation and thus can only speak in utterances suggestive of the notion of the whisper: “she breathed out in shamefaced accents” (Conrad 238) . The code has been unraveled and for those falsely protected by its re-assurances, its revelatory implications are simply untenable and unlivable

In summation, this essay explored three instantiations of coded words in Conrad’s The Secret Agent and their function as key sites of thematic and personal revelation. Hopefully, this semiotic-level analysis has sufficiently demonstrated or at least given plausibility to the role that individual signifiers (at the level of specific repeated key words) can play in service to authorial thematic intention and given credence to the value of any future micro-analyses of Conrad or similar authors that may illustrate the vital and robust aesthetic appreciation that may be gleaned in a close reading of thematically-dense and challenging works of literature