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

compulsion to avoid it. Heppenstall therefore blends the psychological, the spiritual,
and the narrative in Frobisher’s moments of delusion and panic, creating a multileveled
middle without apparent direction.
Still not in conscious control of his own wanderings, Frobisher arrives at the
Institute of Mystical Science, which he has avoided since the early part of the novel.
He suggests, in the narration, the possibility of meeting “Thea,” but, as with the
episode in the church, the Institute is anti-climactic. Instead, a Burmese gem shop
attracts Frobisher’s attention, and here, noticing a mirror, he splits in two:
I stared into this shop window and felt extraordinarily happy. And then
I turned round suddenly. I had felt behind me the presence of
somebody in great anguish of spirit. I turned and saw a man with his
jacket collar up and drying mud on his shoes. Our eyes met for a
second, and then the man turned his heel and walked away, his hands
in his trousers pockets. I felt impelled to follow him. (73)
At this point, it is not entirely clear that the man is Frobisher, but the man’s distress
and unkempt appearance, as well as the mentioning of a mirror, suggest a sort of
Doppelganger. A re-reading (or a careful first reading) reveals that Frobisher has split
his personality into a happy self and an anguished self, and the mirror seems to be the
catalyst: seeing himself externally, rather than internally, produces happiness.
Furthermore, splitting himself allows Frobisher the focalizer to serve as his own
narrator: in the present moment, he sees himself and describes his actions. He has
achieved the what Genette calls homodiegetic narration with external focalization—
the objective narration of the self (Genette, Narrative Discourse Revisited 124).
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