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

is undergoing a mental breakdown, relates unreal events, delusions, and visions in the
same straightforward manner he uses to relay the more mundane events that dominate
the novel. Though these disruptions of the novel’s mundane verisimilitude occur only
occasionally, they mirror Frobisher’s persistent interest in Rudolf Steiner-influenced
mysticism (propounded by the nonfictional Steiner’s fictional disciples at the Institute
of Mystical Science) as well as his interest in astrology, such as the cold promise of
death given by the Saturn of the novel’s title. Saturnine’s modernist experiment,
therefore, lies in its representation not of the conscious mind’s encounter with real
sensory data, but of the mind’s encounter with unreal sensory data, whether it be
genuine mystical experience or madness. These unreal episodes reach a climax at the
beginning of the fourth part of this four-part novel, in which Frobisher declares that
he has died and proceeds to narrate an out-of-body experience before returning to his
body. This near-death experience, which in many ways mirrors the Medieval journey
to the afterlife, serves as a middle of sorts, as Frobisher re-commits himself to life and
to his wife and soon-to-be first child before going off to war in the novel’s sequel,
The Lesser Infortune, which chronicles another mental breakdown for Frobisher, this
time in military service. It also serves as a coda to Saturnine’s long middle, marking
the end of Frobisher’s delusions and providing a forceful philosophical and mystical
resolution to the existential and narrative uncertainties that mark the middle of the
novel.
However, Saturnine also contains its own short middle, which anticipates The
Connecting Door’s engagement with the split self. At nearly the novel’s exact center,
in the seventh of thirteen chapters, Frobisher follows a man who turns out to be
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