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

created, in part, by the use of multiple focalizers, into a continuous tale of evolving
ethics: in Book First, “characters remain wholly and intimately open to one another”
in a state of “polygamy”; in Book Second, there is an “emergence […] of a social
order” and “the birth of the order of justice. […] The order of ‘justice’ in Book Two
is derived by necessity from the so-called injustices of Book One” (Pick 118). That is,
in Pick’s reading, we have a single plot, centered around not a single consciousness,
but around social order. In Wilson and Pick’s readings, Book Second serves as a sort
of fulfillment of the multiplicity of consciousness or point of view in Book First: The
Golden Bowl as essentially a social novel, problematized by the epistemological
isolation of its protagonists.
Wilson’s approach contrasts with Freedman’s, which, in emphasizing
Maggie’s playing of the game in Book Second, inevitably makes her the protagonist.
In Freedman’s reading, and, I would argue, those of most others who emphasize
Maggie’s role, Book First is a sort of extended introduction: the setting up of a
problem that the single protagonist (Maggie) must solve. I will analyze this later
using a simplified version of Propp’s functions. Others who emphasize Maggie’s role
in the novel notably include Norrman, who in discussing James’s use of symmetry
emphasizes not the symmetry between the multiplicity of focalizers or centers of
consciousness in Book First with the singular focalizer of Book Second, but the way
Maggie in Book Second combines both passive and active roles in the drama
(Norrman 210). However illuminating these sorts of readings may be, they are in
some sense unbalanced, emphasizing endings rather than beginnings. They do,
however, reveal the degree to which a single focalizer can become the center of the
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