Locked Out of the Pagoda

Volume Two of The Golden Bowl, and Maggie's mind is finally open to us, three hundred pages in. Garth Greenwell thinks the lockout was James's boldest bet, and this chapter pays it off: a happy young wife sits alone and begins to suspect the shape of her own life. What she sees is a garden, and at its center a tall porcelain tower she has never been inside. Greenwell takes the famous pagoda image apart: what it stands for, and what it costs Maggie to knock. Then the harder question: what does waking up demand of a woman who cannot afford to be caught doing it?