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

inn. The lovers will return to Charlotte and Adam’s home in Eaton place later in the
evening, on the pretense of visiting some local cathedrals. The novel leaves us with
James’s assent, but before Part First ends, there are two chapters set later in that same
day and evening, consisting mostly of Fanny Assingham’s conversations with her
husband Bob. Not only are Charlotte and Amerigo likely to have consummated their
affair during this time, but Fanny has guessed that they have done so. Furthermore,
Fanny narrates Maggie’s actions that evening (for Bob’s benefit, but also for the
reader’s): Maggie has decided to return home to Portland Place rather than remaining
with her father at Eaton Square, as had been her custom. Fanny concludes from this
not only that Charlotte and Amerigo have had an affair, but that Maggie has begun to
suspect the existence of this affair, and that this suspicion is connected to a change in
Maggie that will make her the driving force of the novel’s plot.
Therefore, while Charlotte and Amerigo’s rendezvous at the inn remains
unnarrated at the novel’s absent middle, and this unnarrated action may be foremost
in our minds during the middle, the action has been slightly displaced from the
absent middle itself. It has also, before the absent middle, been paired with an action
of Maggie’s, which, unlike Charlotte and Amerigo’s rendezvous, is given to us by
Fanny as fact. Since we leave Fanny and Bob late in the evening, it seems likely that
any accompanying change in Maggie’s consciousness that evening has also occurred
before the absent middle. So both Charlotte and Amerigo’s action, and Maggie’s
occur before the novel’s second half, but we do not have direct narration of their
actions. Maggie’s story, however, is related in the novel’s second half, including both
a detailed account of her waiting up that evening for Amerigo and the shifts in her
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