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

journey up. But meaning emanates from this narrative bottom, this narrative middle,
and it is difficult to shake the notion that this is Heppenstall’s true vision of both
personality and narrative.
While Saturnine eventually gives us a Frobisher apparently healed by a vision
of death and a decision to re-commit himself to his family as well as enlist in the
army, those later passages suggest a more conventional message that cannot fully
overcome the sense of disintegration found in the novel’s middle. Indeed, the birth of
Frobisher’s daughter provides him with another double, described in detached,
precise physical detail:
The child was sleeping. I had been led to suppose that new-born
children had malformed heads and features for a day or two, especially
after a rather difficult birth. This one had a shapely head, and its
features were perfectly formed. The head was covered with fine, redgold
hair. The features already suggested a likeness to myself. (142).
This time, instead of fleeing toward his double, Frobisher flees from it: “I looked at
the child again. I looked at Margaret. I kissed her. I fled. I did not propose to weep all
over the hospital” (142). The narrator does not make clear just what it is about his
daughter that has brought Frobisher to tears, but the description certainly suggests
that he is disturbed both by coming face to face with himself and by the idea of a
human being born into the world without deformation. In the army as well, Frobisher
mocks the idea of a perfect physical body: “I was very pleased indeed to be Grade
One and made the same joke to everybody I met during the evening—namely, that I
was a perfect specimen of British manhood and that they were sending me in for a
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