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

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sees in the faces. But here we can see that it is not only Frobisher the focalizer who is lacking in will: his other self is unable to go away and, even more significantly, unable to speak. Frobisher has three roles in this moment: a retrospective narrator, who offers no comment and, apparently, no insight into the situation; a focalizer, who supplies most of the content but can apparently do nothing but follow and observe; and an externalized self, whose actions the focalizer narrates. None of these three versions of Frobisher seems to have control of Frobisher’s actions or of the story as a whole. Furthermore, no Frobisher formally recognizes another Frobisher as himself and takes responsibility for his actions. The focalizer, like a standard modernist narrator, has attempted to vacate himself from the story; but in so doing he has only created another self who lacks subjective existence (even if the act of narration creates for him a sort of objective existence). By splitting Frobisher’s self, Heppenstall not only questions the idea of the unitary self, but the idea of objective narration which stands at the heart of much modernist storytelling from Flaubert on. Frobisher attempts to narrate objectively, describing only what he sees, but, unwittingly, he describes only himself. Inside, Frobisher once again encounters a mirror, and he is able to give us this objective description of his own face, not yet recognized as his own, “a face intelligent and mobile but here and there setting in excessively definite lines, the pale, submarine eyes tremulous, hurt and withdrawn, the fair, partly bleaching hair untidy, the outline of cheek and jaw a little rough, shaved perhaps yesterday” (74). The clues to both Frobisher’s psychological (hurt, withdrawn) and physical (shaved perhaps yesterday) self are here again. Frobisher, however, does not question his own interest 197
in this man, and continues to narrate the man’s actions without paying attention to his own. Frobisher spends a page describing the man ordering a drink, then follows him back out the door. Once again, Frobisher shows an implausible ability to detect his subject’s inner state, replacing the first person with the third person: “He looked worried. Rather hungry, too. In the street was a costermonger’s barrow. He seemed to think he would buy some fruit to eat out here and began to feel for a coin in his pocket, but some vague anxiety stopped him” (75-76). One the one hand, the return of the word “vague” serves both to protect the focalizer from charges that he knows too much about his subject’s inner state. Heppenstall has created a situation which neatly challenges the narrative conventions of the late James, who also frequently used the word “vague” to describe characters and their states of mind. James’s narrators, like the focalizer Frobisher in this scene, narrate the detailed actions and thoughts of various characters while keeping themselves largely objective. James occasionally allows his characters moments of insight into each other’s minds. But the complex narrative situation in Saturnine points up the unreality of such narrators and insights. Here, the third-person narration is embedded inside a focalized version of a firstperson narrator: there is no objective heterodiegetic narrator to ground the description in a sense of reality. Moreover, the situation itself is unreal. Frobisher’s insights are not into someone else’s mind, but, as the novel will reveal shortly, into his own. But the insights are ultimately superficial—and Frobisher has throughout the novel shown himself with little ability to understand his own thoughts and motivations, let alone those of other people. Whereas James produced insight through objective narration of mental processes, in Saturnine the workings of mental processes overwhelm objective 198
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ABSTRACT Title of Document: BRITISH
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BRITISH MODERNIST NARRATIVE MIDDLES
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Dedication To my wife Pat, my disse
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Table of Contents Dedication ......
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necessarily after anything else, an
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eginning. That is, a modernist midd
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and Mario Ortiz-Robles have brought
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Princess Casamassima. The former is
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choice of McHale’s definition is
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In examining modernist middles, I w
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“is to overlook the other fundame
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evolution of capitalism strikes me
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spatial and temporal confines. On t
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narratives in Beckett’s Molloy, c
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Johnson mark an end to Britain’s
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period somewhat peripheral, a parti
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is oriented around endings (Jim’s
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eal world, yet the novel explores i
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Ulysses, the second half of In Tran
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Modernist texts may also contain mi
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chapters), and the end as Marlow’
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potentially be used to highlight ep
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middle) of the veracity of the Time
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Jim’s actions within a causal nar
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to Patusan midway through the novel
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violation of the unity of action, b
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which mass culture will be articula
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Jameson shows how the difference be
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genres, connected by multiple middl
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it does in Jameson’s reading. How
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text, since only a vast rupture req
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actually see Jim make the deal with
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for interpreting his own life and t
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garners an enthusiastic response fr
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circular encasement, which has the
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text’s initial questions are begi
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Chapter 2: Modernist Points of View
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it seems that the marriage plot is
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centering his novels within his pro
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singular, centered focalization—a
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inn. The lovers will return to Char
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consciousness itself seems to contr
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created, in part, by the use of mul
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epistemological problem: how do the
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observation leads immediately and i
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ineffectiveness” (Kafalenos 125).
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shall have everything’” (266).
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can to the sheer unspeakable narrat
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induce me” (277). Fanny, then, re
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and the objective world. Instead, M
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‘Sure. Nothing will. Good-night,
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It was not till many days had passe
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which a story unfolds, and perhaps
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When Amerigo arrives, Maggie’s co
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accomplish, who she will meet, what
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Chapter 3: “Time Passes”: The M
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narrative force towards modernist m
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Even as “Time Passes” serves an
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technique of modernist narrative, b
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ground of any rival solutions to Li
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summary and scene” (Genette, Narr
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Window,” and the ending section,
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presentation in “Time Passes.”
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where things happen. Events are mad
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has promised James that they will g
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For Lucio Ruotolo, however, this na
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eginning, middle, and end together
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integral to the musical and dramati
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spring from the narrative problem o
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who creates a mind for inanimate ob
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own thoughts nor that of any charac
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language, and thus subject to the c
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Lighthouse,” and narrations of th
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in so far as her presence helps the
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anthropomorphizing narrative—but
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In the initial description of summe
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Page 164 and 165: Furthermore, passages like this fun
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Page 168 and 169: Mrs. McNab and Mrs. Bast are arguab
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Page 172 and 173: conventions of modernist and tradit
Page 174 and 175: middle by making itself markedly di
Page 176 and 177: Lighthouse’s primary narrative pa
Page 178 and 179: served to marginalize experimental
Page 180 and 181: the author’s other novels. Alick
Page 182 and 183: himself. In an episode that resembl
Page 184 and 185: unity between time story time and n
Page 186 and 187: accept the lying perspective as par
Page 188 and 189: cause and which effect. Any attempt
Page 190 and 191: died on October, 1938” (7). Frobi
Page 192 and 193: middle of fundamental change; the u
Page 194 and 195: However, like the stories Macmann a
Page 196 and 197: which takes Saturnine to the edge o
Page 198 and 199: Aspic, to thank him for his kindnes
Page 200 and 201: Whereas Genette’s discussion of h
Page 202 and 203: problems of the self, but instead p
Page 206 and 207: narration. Frobisher has entered a
Page 208 and 209: Frobisher is reassured both by the
Page 210 and 211: strode on. He said, with his eyes n
Page 212 and 213: analyze mental states from outside
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Page 218 and 219: Thus, after a tile falls from the r
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Page 224 and 225: The ending Frobisher comes to with
Page 226 and 227: though the novel’s return to epis
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Page 236 and 237: that each of the novel’s sections
Page 238 and 239: inadequate to me for such a narrati
Page 240 and 241: narratives. This fundamental differ
Page 242 and 243: turned into a thing. In fact, as Jo
Page 244 and 245: unburden the author’s memory. How
Page 246 and 247: Instead, the middle of The Unfortun
Page 248 and 249: By contrast, the second type of sec
Page 250 and 251: at both. This particular failure is
Page 252 and 253: as knowing it, as he did not know o
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had been so full-fleshed, the whole
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had talked, Tony” (“That was th
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epudiation of its own central moder
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narrator/rememberer. Johnson mainta
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etrospective, an attempt to think i
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it, welcome it) the ball spun lazil
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worn” 9-10). The image finds the
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like a miracle, though he still cou
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By contrast, when the narrator firs
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memory: a mixture of the ordered an
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Chapter 6: Indivisible Form, Divide
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ecause postmodernism concerns the n
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in the diegetic reality of the nove
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section one LINGUISTIC LEPROSY Alle
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In Transit’s musical subtitles al
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they are perched between or represe
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performative in a Butlerian sense,
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the chorus describe themselves as a
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lamentable incident which I am now
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social component of thought only th
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identity, which remains unitary and
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not an effort to give the narrator
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Novelist 33). That is, Pat-the-narr
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primarily with classifying Pat’s
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now irrelevant, replaced by the pur
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etween reader and author. When Pat
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consequences for the entire world o
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world presented to the reader in Se
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of Pat’s own life, and by forgett
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evolutionaries find that another gr
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However, Brophy is not entirely don
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masculinity. Its manifestations are
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to violate. In Transit’s postmode
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ontological—shifts to consider de
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However, I would argue that we read
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Conclusion Modernism and narrative
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approximately half of the narrative
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little attention in the past, littl
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Brophy, Brigid. Don’t Never Forge
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1989. 162-185. ---. “Periodizing
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Johnson, B. S. The Unfortunates. Ed
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Political in the Novels of Virginia
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Said, Edward. Beginnings: Intention
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