Reading a modernist absolute: Philosophy and psychology in May Sinclair

This dissertation concentrates on the philosophical and psychological concepts that ground May Sinclair's writing, and it demonstrates an intellectual development that intersected with, and sometimes even preceded, concepts that lie at the ground of modernist thought. The crux of my argument lies in what I contend is the impact of Sinclair's vision of the place of supreme understanding, which she first calls the Absolute and later the "Ultimate Consciousness," and the effect of its presence on the many movements that can be categorized under the larger rubric of modernism: classicism, imagism, vorticism, egoism, psychologism, and feminism. Her revamping of philosophical idealism to meet the challenges of the new realism exhibits an Absolute that can only be known contingently, never absolutely---a characteristic paradox of modernism;Chapter One begins with a biographical overview of Sinclair and turns to the work of T. H. Green whose secular theology focuses on a self-realization of individual potential as a means of striving towards an ultimate perfection. A reading of The Rector of Wyck clarifies Sinclair's use of these ideas. Chapter Two takes up the influence of the Hegelian dialectic on Sinclair's work and her concept of a new mysticism, using The Dark Night to explicate the argument. Chapter Three focuses on the concept of dynamic energy that Sinclair builds from her reading of Schopenhauer and looks at the employment of this energy as it relates to modernist practice in a close reading of The Divine Fire. Chapter Four examines The Tree of Heaven as a text that unites egoism, feminism, vorticism, and the experience of war and connects this energy with the concept of Absolute and the "tree of heaven." In Chapter Five I lay out the evolution of Sinclair's own theory of sublimation, using readings of The Three Sisters and Mary Olivier. Chapter Six begins with the story of failed subjectivity in Sinclair's primary modernist work, Life and Death of Harriett Frean, and, continuing with a reading of Uncanny Stories, brings together the concepts at play in Sinclair's fiction that confirm her position in the mainstream of modernist thought.