25.12.2013 Views

ABSTRACT Title of Document: BRITISH MODERNIST ... - DRUM

ABSTRACT Title of Document: BRITISH MODERNIST ... - DRUM

ABSTRACT Title of Document: BRITISH MODERNIST ... - DRUM

SHOW MORE
SHOW LESS

Create successful ePaper yourself

Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.

which a story unfolds, and perhaps nowhere more so than at the beginning <strong>of</strong> Book<br />

Second.<br />

The famous image <strong>of</strong> the pagoda is notable not only for its exoticism (in a<br />

novel concerned entirely with Western high society) and its elaboration, but also for<br />

how it places the very plot <strong>of</strong> the novel (the “situation”) in Maggie’s mind, which is<br />

figured explicitly as a setting. This rendering <strong>of</strong> the mind as a setting is accomplished<br />

by rather elaborate thought report:<br />

This situation had been occupying, for months and months, the very<br />

centre <strong>of</strong> the garden <strong>of</strong> her life, but it had reared itself there like some<br />

strange, tall tower <strong>of</strong> ivory, or perhaps rather some wonderful,<br />

beautiful, but outlandish pagoda, a structure plated with hard, bright<br />

porcelain, coloured and figured and adorned, at the overhanging eaves,<br />

with silver bells that tinkled, ever so charmingly, when stirred by<br />

chance airs. She had walked round and round it—that was what she<br />

felt; she had carried on her existence in the space left her for<br />

circulation, a space that sometimes seemed ample and sometimes<br />

narrow; looking up, all the while, at the fair structure that spread itself<br />

so amply and rose so high, but never quite making out, as yet, where<br />

she might have entered had she wished. (James, Golden Bowl 299)<br />

The pagoda, though exotically Orientalized (it is later figured as a Mosque), is<br />

contained at the center, specifically, <strong>of</strong> Maggie’s life. It is her garden the pagoda<br />

occupies. Maggie is no longer a figure in the plot <strong>of</strong> the novel—the plot <strong>of</strong> the novel<br />

is a figure in her life. And all <strong>of</strong> this is contained within her consciousness:<br />

99

Hooray! Your file is uploaded and ready to be published.

Saved successfully!

Ooh no, something went wrong!