The Secret Agent

Winnie Verloc has been married to Adolf for seven years. Their marriage is not built on love; Winnie recalls that she turned down proposals from other men—men whom she truly loved—because Verloc was the most pragmatic match for her. She is married to Verloc because he is able to support her mother and her brother. Her choices draw attention to economic realities for working-class women who cannot afford to pursue happiness. Winnie grew up in an abusive household. Her father abused her and Stevie; since then, she has felt a strong urge to protect Stevie at all costs, sacrificing a truly loving relationship for the quiet convenience of her marriage to Verloc, as Stevie will be protected.

Winnie leads a simple life. She helps her husband to run the store, she takes care of Stevie, and she helps her mother. To Winnie, this is a good life. She defends her existence to Chief Inspector Heat, proudly defending the family’s modest status. To Winnie, someone who has sacrificed a great deal for this level of security, their existence is commendable. To someone who has survived abuse and feared for her future, this level of security is not only adequate but enviable. While other working-class characters dream of social revolution to improve their positions relative to society, Winnie looks at her immediate surroundings and feels content. She does not consider herself a downtrodden member of the proletariat because she understands what she has risked and what she has sacrificed to achieve this existence for herself, her brother, and her mother.

However, the narrative suggests that Winnie is content with her life because she refuses to interrogate the world around her in a critical or contemplative manner. She has no interest in looking beyond the surface level of anything. Winnie is detached from the world, existing on a diet of platitudes and disinterest. To Winnie, life is to be experienced rather than understood. When she does encourage interest in the world around her, she suffers from the consequences. Winnie has no particular interest in her husband’s politics or his illicit activities. This listlessness conveys the extent of Exploitation Due to Unequal Power Structures in her society; she sees no point in attempting to change anything.

She does care about Stevie, however, so she encourages Verloc to spend more time with her brother. Verloc follows her advice but in a manner that she could never have expected. Winnie knows nothing about her husband’s radicalism, so she could never comprehend that Stevie might consume the anarchist propaganda to such an extent that he becomes a participant in a terrorist attack. Stevie dies because Verloc took an interest in him. As she comes to terms with the reality of her brother’s death, she cannot ignore the rest of the world any longer. Stevie’s death shakes her out of her disinterest and forces Winnie to analyze her actions and her situation. She therefore undergoes the most development out of any character in the text.

With Stevie dead and her mother moved out, Winnie realizes that she is a free woman. By killing Stevie, Verloc has unwittingly removed the last remaining attachment which kept Winnie moored. Without Stevie and without her mother, Winnie has no reason to sacrifice her own happiness to be with Verloc. She takes out years of pent up frustration on Verloc, stabbing him with a knife, meaning that she is also the only truly radical character in the text who commits an act of violence to defend her beliefs. Winnie kills Verloc in a burst of passion and tries to flee, only to realize that she has very few friends or ways to support herself. By chance, she runs into Ossipon and she immediately launches into a shortened, more direct version of the pragmatic romanticism that led to her marriage to Verloc. She promises to love Ossipon if he helps her to escape. At first, he is seduced by the idea. When he abandons her, Winnie feels alone. Her death is not shown in the narrative, only hinted at. Ossipon reads that a woman matching Winnie’s description threw herself from a boat as she had nowhere else left to go. The ambiguity reflects the uncertainty of modern life and is an example of modernist break with literary conventions of certain endings and reported events.

The Secret Agent portrays numerous characters from either side of the investigation into the Greenwich bombing. Among them, however, the Assistant Commissioner emerges as the most round character, particularly with regard to his relationship with the British elite. The Assistant Commissioner is a man defined by his titles and connections. In a very literal sense, he does not have a name and his presence in the novel is defined by his relatively modest position in the British security state. During the course of his investigation, the name Michaelis makes him reflect on his wife Annie’s connections to the British elite. He has a firm understanding of the way in which Michaelis’s wealthy female patron will disapprove of her pet project being accused of the bombing, so the Assistant Commissioner steers Heat’s investigation in a direction that is more conducive to the social relationships of the Assistant Commissioner’s wife. The Assistant Commissioner’s role is to defend the status quo of the British state against the radical insurgents and revolutionaries. His relatively modest situation within this status quo means that—in a material sense—he has more in common with those he pursues, but he subjugates himself to the whims of his wealthy patrons and benefactors because this is the way in which he understands power. He is a servant of the system and both a perpetrator and victim of Exploitation Due to Unequal Power Structures—structures he strives to protect.

The Assistant Commissioner learned his trade in the British colonies. In an unnamed corner of the British Empire, he was tasked with “breaking up certain nefarious secret societies amongst the natives” (74). He refined his talents as an instrument of colonial power, imposing British rule on indigenous peoples against their will to further the extraction of wealth from these colonies by the British and to consecrate Britain’s status as an imperial power. His backstory draws attention to The Impact of Colonialism on National Identity. The Assistant Commissioner liked this work. He was good at his job. He left, however, as his wife did not want to live in the colonies. The Assistant Commissioner returned to England and brought with him the knowledge and techniques of colonial control, which are then directed at the working-class British revolutionaries. The Assistant Commissioner would prefer to be abroad, targeting colonial subjects, but he wields the same power and the same techniques against his fellow Englishman. As such, he represents the boomerang effect of colonial violence. The Assistant Commissioner is British colonial power returned to Britain, an illustration of the way in which the British Empire had reached its peak and the forces of violence and control are being redirected toward those inside the country. The Assistant Commissioner’s nameless imposition of power is the rebounding consequence of colonialism returning home.