Consequently, the men appear to be symbolically emasculated by their feelings for the opposite sex, as can be seen in Romeo's phrase, "O sweet Juliet, Thy beauty hath made me effeminate / And in my temper softened valour's steel!," which recalls Heyst's self-justifying complaint to Lena that, "only two months ago [...] I would have defied their
scoundrelism [...] But now I have you!" (Romeo 3.1.113-15; Victory 263).
Conrad demonstrates--as Panichas, drawing upon Irving Babbitt's concept of the "law of measure," makes clear--that the political and moral folly of the revolutionaries does not free Razumov from the demands of his own conscience: Under Western Eyes portrays the process of moral discovery in the face of confusion,
scoundrelism, anarchism.
The great cities reek with respectable as much as non-respectable robbery and
scoundrelism. In fashionable life, flippancy, tepid amours, weak infidelism, small aims, or no aims at all, only to kill time.
