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

primarily with classifying Pat’s transgendered genitalia. However, Pat adopts a
Freudian model, where sex is defined as the presence or absence of male genitalia.
The problem is no longer absence of knowledge about Pat’s sexual characteristics,
but the absence of the characteristics themselves. The world itself has violated Pat’s
epistemological models, and Pat locates the problem in the world rather than in those
models.
As Patricia escapes first the lavatory and then the Transit Lounge itself—
outside onto a ledge in the “wide, deep, cold space” (124), she finds herself in Section
Three no longer in the naturalistic world occupied by most modernism. With the
beginning of Section Three, Patricia instead finds herself in “the lesbian underworld,”
where “all the porters were women” (130). At first, this world appears to still be that
of a realistic airport: subsection 1 takes place in the familiarly mechanical world of
luggage conveyance. However, once Patricia has identified this (physically
naturalistic) space as the (socially fantastical) lesbian underworld, we can see that the
genres and language play which in the first half of the novel dominated Pat’s mind
now begin to meld into the world itself. Making her way back up to the airport via the
conveyor belt, Patricia sees
two inscriptions, one on each side of the flap she was headed for.
The left flank read
WOMEN OF THE WORLD UNITE.
YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE
BUT YOUR LABOUR PAINS.
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