Character Analysis
Phrenology, Wha?
Ossipon is a former medical student (a dropout, in other words), who writes pamphlets that promote radical political ideas. He also gets by financially by having a bunch of sugar mamas all over London. He might even be a gigolo for all we know, as the book suggests that he sleeps with "his various conquests" to support himself (13.36).
The most notable thing about Ossipon is his nutty belief in the theories of Cesare Lombroso, a 19th-century Italian guy who thought you could identify a criminal just by looking at his face. Lombroso created a way of measuring skulls that is known as phrenology, and has been completely rejected by respectable science for more than half a century. Ossipon thinks he can look at anyone and know everything about them: he checks out Stevie and pegs the young man as a "Very good type, too, altogether, of that sort of degenerate. It's good enough to glance at the lobes of his ears" (3.23).
Basically, every character in this book believes in something. Verloc believes in laziness; Stevie believes in compassion; the Professor believes in himself, and Ossipon believes in completely bogus science.
It's even Ossipon's belief in Lombroso that eventually convinces him to abandon Winnie and take all her money: he thinks her skull shape is that of a killer. Of course, the dude had just seen the dead body of her murdered husband, and heard her confession, so the whole "killer skull shape" conclusion seems pretty weaksauce.
More than likely, Ossipon just uses Lombroso as an excuse for ditching Winnie and taking all her money to go buy himself a whole bunch of beer. Through Ossipon, Conrad basically shows readers that anarchists are total cowards at heart, and that a lot of people who say that believe in "science" just use whatever scientific argument they want to justify their own selfish decisions.
Wow, Dude has a Soul
Ossipon is probably one of the most unlikeable people in this book. But he's totally broken up when he reads and article in the newspaper saying that Winnie committed suicide. He's especially rattled by the way the paper uses the phrases "impenetrable mystery" and "This act of madness or despair" to describe the suicide (13.51). For Ossipon, there's nothing "impenetrable" at all about what she did: it's because of him and what he did to her.
But that's not all there is to it. Ossipon's a dude who uses science to make total sense of the senseless world. But when he's confronted by the mysteries of Winnies inner life, he realizes that he really knows nothing about her. For a guy like Ossipon, there's nothing more depressing than uncertainty. And after reading about Winnies death, he feels as though the whole world is covered in uncertainty… and maybe even randomness. This gives him the heebie-jeebies.
Through Ossipon, Conrad totally trashes the idea that a person can make moral judgments based on "science," and he shows us that this kind of behavior is just a jerk's way of not taking responsibility for what he does. Ossipon's a bum who deserves to feel terrible at the end of this book. During Conrad's time, there were tons of people who believed that you could validate your entire existence based on science… and there are still plenty of them around today. Ever hear a guy that's cheated on his wife blame male evolutionary biology? Case in point.