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

transactions of honor—Jim swears oaths to her (184), and she is in turn able to
declare him “false” (208). Furthermore, Jewel may be seen as an alternative parallel
to the pilgrims: on behalf of the Malays, Jim takes the incorrect action, but it is Jewel
whom he abandons, as he did the pilgrims. This incomplete reading of the role of
Jewel and the tale of love in the Patusan episode as well as Lord Jim as whole is not
meant to be in any way definitive. It serves instead to illustrate the great complexity
of the relationship between the first and second halves of the novels, one of the many
ways by which the text marks the different ways in which narrative and its meaning
can be constructed, even as the “facts” of the narrative are not under dispute.
Furthermore, making Jewel the key figure in the novel’s transitional middle focuses
that middle on a figure marginalized and commodified by gender. This suggests that
each half of the novel is in itself a gendered commodity—and it should be
unsurprising that the second half gained its poor reputation under male critics, while it
is generally female critics such as Schneider who attempt to rehabilitate it. Lord Jim
is thus a novel of multiple middles, which can be produced depending on one’s
critical approach. This also reveals how the exact interpretation of the difference
between the two halves of the novel both shapes and be shaped by the selection of a
central middle, a key section of the novel’s text that guides interpretation of the
differences and unities produced by the division of the novel.
Meanwhile, the potential interpretations of the novel’s central middle that
divides Patna from Patusan continue to multiply, particular in critiques informed by
postcolonial theory. For Padmini Mongia, the Patusan episode is an “imperialist
romance” (182). Here, the generic shift acquires a political-ideological edge, much as
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