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The Secret Agent
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Chapters 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
Content warning: This section of the guide discusses suicide, abuse, and ableism.
Adolf Verloc runs a store in Soho, London, in the 1880s. The neighborhood is run-down and poor, providing a home to many immigrants. Verloc’s store sells pornography, contraceptives, and other illicit material. As a result, most of his clientele visits the store in secret. They favor discretion. Verloc lives behind the store with his family. He is large-bodied and “thoroughly domesticated” (4). Winnie Verloc, his wife, is largely indifferent to everything around her. She runs the house and occasionally helps in her husband’s store. Her brother, Stevie, has an unnamed cognitive disability. He is quiet and sensitive. When he was 14, however, he was tricked by a pair of office workers into setting off fireworks in a building. Following the incident, the people around Stevie restricted his movements. He was told to stay in the back of the boarding house which was run by his mother.
Mr. Verloc met Winnie while renting a room in the boarding house. They married and moved into the home where they currently reside. Winnie’s mother also lives with them, appreciating the way in which her son-in-law is able to support her daughter, Stevie, and herself. The family lives in relative comfort. Though Adolf and Winnie have no children, Winnie plays the role of mother to Stevie. Stevie tries to help his brother-in-law, but he spends most of his time drawing circles repeatedly with a compass as though he were part of some “great industry” (8).
Chapter 2 Summary
Mr. Verloc must leave the house early, as he has been summoned to an unspecified embassy. He works as a double agent on behalf of the unnamed foreign government, infiltrating a group of revolutionary anarchists. He uses a delta symbol (Δ) as his code name. Verloc walks through the busy, twisted streets of London. As he walks, he reflects on his desire to protect his society. In doing so, he will be able to protect his own indolent existence. Verloc arrives at the embassy, where he is met by Privy Councilor Wurmt. Verloc’s recent work displeases Wurmt, who criticizes Verloc's recent reports. Though the reports describe potential unrest, Wurmt is more interested in facts than potential. He would like this potential unrest to become real unrest, so as to “stimulate [the police’s] vigilance” (13).
Wurmt takes Verloc to meet the First Secretary, Mr. Vladimir. When Verloc enters, the slim and pretentious Vladimir mocks the large-bodied, indolent Verloc as he cannot possibly pass as “a member of the starving proletariat” (16). He also expresses contempt that Verloc was forced to leave France because he sold military secrets. Vladimir is particularly displeased about an incident with a French woman, which led to Verloc being arrested in an embarrassing manner. If Verloc is unable to produce satisfactory reports, Vladimir says, then he will be cut from the spying program. For the past 11 years, Verloc worked under Baron Stott-Wartenheim. Following the death of Ambassador Stott-Wartenheim, however, the reports of potential plots are no longer enough. The newly-appointed Vladimir shares his theory that English society—and, in particular, the English middle class—has grown complacent. They do not fear anarchism or anarchists, he warns. Vladimir believes that a spectacular act of terrorism may be needed to remind them of the threat posed by anarchists. Such an act would strike fear into them and the English would call for the restriction of civil liberties to protect the society.
Vladimir says that a bomb placed at the Greenwich Royal Observatory would be a suitably symbolic attack on science, which is the “fetish of today” (23). The bourgeois society would be outraged, though Vladimir believes that this attack would be particularly effective because it seems to exist outside the understood boundaries of prevailing political ideologies in this “absurd country” (26). Verloc is shocked by Vladimir’s suggestion. He travels home in a daze and then dines with his family.
Chapter 3 Summary
Three revolutionaries meet Verloc in a room behind Verloc’s shop. Each of them has their own unique aesthetic and ideology, though they are all united by their dependence on a respective woman (or women) in their lives. Michaelis is an unhealthy, large-bodied man who zealously believes that history is moving inevitably toward a social revolution. Karl Yundt is an elderly man who takes great pride in being a terrorist, even though he has never actually performed an act of terrorism himself. He has only convinced others to perform such acts. Alexander Ossipon is the most physically imposing of the three. He is a medical student who views the world through the lens of whatever scientific theories are popular at any given moment. He is also a womanizer. Verloc quietly observes that the men may be very different, but they are united in their dependence on women and their broad inability to achieve anything much.
Together, these four men form an anarchist group named F.P., which stands for Future of the Proletariat. They talk about social issues and strategies that might effect change. Michaelis views the decline of capitalism as inevitable, as he has faith in humanity. Accordingly, he believes that they should use subtle propaganda to gently steer society in the desired direction. Ossipon disagrees. He believes that the people require an emotional jolt. Yundt claims that he wants destructive spectacles, even though he has not so much as raised his little finger to challenge society. In his mind, Verloc worries about how he will convince these people to bomb the observatory. He does not believe that these three men have the capacity to accomplish such a mission. During this conversation, Stevie has been listening nearby as he draws his circles. The men’s talk of “cannibalistic” politics disturbs him (38). That evening, Verloc and Winnie prepare for bed. Winnie talks about the ways in which Stevie could still contribute to the family, though she notes that her husband’s political talk makes him “very excited” (43), and she had to confiscate a knife from him in this excited state. Verloc is not worried about Stevie. He is more worried about his assignment from Vladimir.
Chapters 1-3 Analysis
The Secret Agent begins with Adolf Verloc walking toward the embassy of an unnamed foreign country. He is the titular secret agent, on his way to meet his handler. Amid this backdrop of espionage and secrecy, however, the first chapter focuses on the domestic drama of Verloc’s life. This domestic lens is far more useful for understanding Verloc’s character, the narration suggests, than the murky world of spies and secret agents. Verloc is described as a domesticated man. He thrives on indolence and laziness, accepting his relatively modest role in society so long as he does not need to actually do anything. By prioritizing Verloc’s indolence and domestic narrative over his involvement in the world of espionage, Conrad introduces foreshadowing. Verloc’s domesticity rather than his ideology will become a major motivating factor in his actions.
The opening chapters are in fact filled with foreshadowing. The description of Stevie, for example, reveals that older boys caused him to lose a job by manipulating him into setting off fireworks. Later, Verloc will cause Stevie to lose his life by manipulating him into setting off a bomb. This introduces the theme of Exploitation Due to Unequal Power Structures, as people take advantage of their relative power over Stevie. Winnie also notes that she has had to take a knife from Stevie as she fears that she may hurt himself, while she will wield a knife in later chapters to hurt Verloc for putting Stevie in a dangerous position. These narrative elements are introduced early and, like one of the Professor’s bombs, they wait until the right time to detonate.
When Verloc does reach the embassy, he meets with Vladimir. This is the first meeting between the two men, as Verloc’s previous work was handled by Vladimir’s predecessor. Vladimir is less pleased with Verloc’s work, and he is not hesitant to criticize Verloc as a spy and as a person. Vladimir’s actual nationality is not specified (though the novel hints that he may be Russian). As a result, Vladimir and his embassy are foreign in an unspecific, abstract way, highlighting the generalized xenophobia of the period amid fear of political disruption. They represent an external (though European) force that stands in opposition to men like those in the F.P. but largely seeks to preserve the status quo of British society. Vladimir’s country may be a rival to Britain on a national level, but on an ideological level, Vladimir has more in common with the ruling class of Britain than he does with the anarchists who seek to change British society. Vladimir loathes the anarchists, and he tells Verloc to blow up the Greenwich Observatory to manipulate the public opinion against anarchism, thus prompting the British state to take the threat of anarchism more seriously. To accomplish this, however, he makes use of anarchist tactics: creating a spectacle such as a terrorist bombing to inspire change. However, he aims to preserve rather than to dismantle the status quo.
After Vladimir, the narrative switches to the motley assembly of anarchists with whom Verloc associates. This loose band of supposed radicals is presented in a very unsympathetic manner. Each of them is deeply flawed in his own way, highlighting The Rarity of Sincere Radicalism. What unites these men, however, is their dependence on women. Most obviously, Michaelis is supported by a wealthy female benefactor who embodies the exact status, privilege, and power that he is ideologically against. Ossipon, as proved later in the novel, is an unreliable womanizer who is more interested in fashionable ideas (and himself) than in actual revolution. Yundt, the terrorist who has never committed an act of terror, is entirely dependent on his fearsome old wife, and Verloc predicts that Yundt will not survive long after her death. Verloc is not only a secret agent who works for Vladimir against his associates, but he is more concerned with the wellbeing of his wife than the wellbeing of the revolution. These supposed anarchists are not the frightening force of social change that Vladimir needs the world to believe that they may be. Instead, they are pathetic, lazy men who can only exist due to the support of women. Conrad hence deconstructs the masculine performance of these men by portraying them as impotent: They exhibit bravado and purport to be radicals, but they are ineffective in both the domestic and political spheres.
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