This course asks what it is to be modern as well as what it means for the novel as a genre to be modern. It does so by looking at one of the oldest institutions, that of adultery, roughly from the 1910s through the early 1940s. The choice of focusing on an institution is deliberate, modernism and the modern is in many ways a mix of tradition and if not revolution then renewal, crisis, or some sense of change. Our texts will take up the issues of sexual relations, marriage, what it is to know, or not to know (or what it is to know you do not know), and with that the issue of character presentation (do all characters have an inner life?), and a relation to one's past—or one's culture's past and, with that, history. The course will stress close reading, literary style, and thematic analysis; and proceed as a mix of discussion and lecture, with the emphasis on the former. (Warning: this class is about what is happening in the novels and critical analysis is our approach; personal experiences will not find their place in our discussions.) Grading is based on participation, a series of short response papers structured around the formulation of a question, formal papers, and possibly quizzes. Authors include Jean Rhys, Ford Madox Ford, Anita Loos, D. H. Lawrence, Evelyn Waugh, and Mary McCarthy.