Part 9 (1/2)

=4. The Epistolary Point of View.=--A convenient means of s.h.i.+fting the burden of the narrative at any point to a certain special character is to introduce a letter written by that character to one of the other people in the plot. This expedient is employed with extraordinary cleverness by George Meredith in ”Evan Harrington.” Most of the tale is told externally; but every now and then the clever and witty Countess de Saldar writes a letter in which a leading incident is illuminated from her personal point of view.

Ever since the days of Richardson the device has frequently been used of telling an entire story through a series of letters exchanged among the characters. The main advantage of this method is the constant s.h.i.+fting of the point of view, which makes it possible for the reader to see every important incident through the eyes of each of the characters in turn. Furthermore, it is comparatively easy to characterize in the first person when the thing that is written is so intimate and personal as a letter. But the disadvantage of the device lies in the fact that it tends toward incoherence in the structure of the narrative. It is hard for the author to stick to the point at every moment without violating the casual and discursive tone that the epistolary style demands.

Of course a certain unity may be gained if the letters used are all written by a single character. The chief advantage of this method over a direct narrative written by one of the actors is the added motive for the revelation of intimate matters which is furnished by the fact that the narrator is writing, not for the public at large, but only for the friend, or friends, to whom the letters are addressed. But a series of letters written by one person only is very likely to become monotonous; and more is usually gained than lost by a.s.signing the epistolary role successively to different characters.

=II. Subdivisions of the Second Cla.s.s.=--We have seen that, although the employment of an internal point of view gives a narrative vividness of action, objectivity of observation, immediacy of emotion, and plausibility of tone, it is attended by several difficulties in the delineation of the characters and the construction of the plot. It is therefore in many cases more advisable for the author to look upon the narrative externally and to write it in the third person. But there are several different ways of doing this; for though a story viewed externally is told in every case by a mind distinct from that of any of the characters, there are many different stations in which that mind may set itself, and many different moods in which it may recount the story.

=1. The Omniscient Point of View.=--First of all (to start with a phase that contrasts most widely with the internal point of view) the external mind may set itself equidistant from all the characters and may a.s.sume toward them an att.i.tude of absolute omniscience. The story, in such a case, is told by a sort of G.o.d, who is cognizant of the past and future of the action while he is looking at the present, and who sees into the minds and hearts of all the characters at once and understands them better than they do themselves.

The main practical advantage in a.s.suming the G.o.d-like point of view is that the narrator is never obliged to account for his possession of intimate information. He can observe events which happen at the same time in places widely separated. Darkness cannot dim his eyes; locked doors cannot shut him out. He can be with a character when that character is most alone. He can make clear to us the thoughts that do not tremble into speech, the emotions that falter and subside into inaction. He can know, and can convey to us, how much of a person's real thought is expressed, and how much is concealed, by the language that he uses. And the reader seeks no motive to account for the narrator's revelation of the personal secrets of the characters.

The omniscient point of view is the only one that permits upon a large scale the depiction of character through mental a.n.a.lysis. It is therefore usually used in the ”psychological novel.” It was employed always by George Eliot, and was selected almost always by George Meredith. It is, of course, invaluable for telling the sort of story whose main events are mental, or subjective. A spiritual experience which does not translate itself into concrete action can be viewed adequately only from the G.o.d-like point of view. But when it is employed in the narration of objective events, the writer runs the danger of undue abstractness. A certain vividness--a certain immediacy of observation--are likely to be lost, because of the aloofness from the characters of the mind that sees them.

This point of view is at once the most easy and the most difficult that the author may a.s.sume. Technically it is the easiest, because the writer is absolutely free in the selection and the patterning of his narrative materials; but humanly it is the most difficult, because it is hard for any man consistently to play the G.o.d, even toward his own fict.i.tious creatures. Although George Eliot a.s.sumes omniscience of Daniel Deronda, the consensus of opinion among men of sound judgment is that she does not really know her hero. Deronda is in truth a lesser person than she thinks him; and her a.s.sumption of omniscience breaks down. In fact, unless an author is gifted with the G.o.d-like wisdom of George Meredith, he is almost sure to break down in the effort to sustain the omniscient att.i.tude consistently throughout a complicated novel.

=2. The Limited Point of View.=--Therefore, in a.s.suming a point of view external to the characters, it is usually wiser for the author to accept a compromise and to impose certain definite limits upon his own omniscience. Thus, while maintaining the prerogative to enter at any moment the minds of one or more of his characters, he may limit his observation of the others to what was actually seen and heard of them by those of whose minds he is omniscient. In such a case, although the author tells the story in the third person, he virtually sees the story from the point of view of a certain actor, or of certain actors, in it. The only phase of this device which we need to examine is that wherein the novelist's omniscience is limited to a single character.

This special point of view is employed with consummate art by Jane Austen. In ”Emma,” for example, she portrays every intimate detail of the heroine's thoughts and feelings, entering Emma's mind at will, or looking at her from the outside with omniscient eyes. But in dealing with the other characters, the author limits her own knowledge to what Emma knew about them, and sees them consistently through the eyes of the heroine. Hence the story, although written by Jane Austen in the third person, is really seen by Emma Woodhouse and thought of in the first. Similarly, in ”Pride and Prejudice,” Elizabeth Bennet is the only character that the author permits herself to a.n.a.lyze at any length: the others are seen objectively, merely as Elizabeth saw them.

The reader is made acquainted with every step in the heroine's gradual change of feeling toward Mr. Darcy; but of the change in Darcy's thoughts and feelings toward Elizabeth the reader is told nothing until she herself discovers it.

Of course, in applying this device, it is possible for the author, at certain points in the narrative, to s.h.i.+ft his limited omniscience from one of the characters to another. In such a case, although the story is told throughout consistently in the third person, one scene may be viewed from the standpoint of one of the characters, another from that of another character, and so on.

Imagine for a moment two adjacent rooms with a single door between them which is locked; and suppose a character alone in each of the rooms,--each person thinking of the other. Now an author a.s.suming absolute omniscience could tell us what each of them was thinking at the selfsame moment: the locked door would not be a bar to him. But an author telling the story from the att.i.tude of limited omniscience could tell us only what one of them was thinking, and would not be able to see beyond the door. Whether or not he would find himself at liberty to choose which room he should be cognizant of, would depend of course on whether he was maintaining the same point of view throughout his story or was selecting it anew for every scene. In the first case, the one character whom he could see would be determined in advance: in the other, he should have to decide from the point of view of which of them that special scene could be the more effectively set forth.

The att.i.tude of limited omniscience is more easy to maintain than that of a G.o.d-like mind intimately cognizant of all the characters at once; and furthermore, the employment of the more restricted point of view is more likely to produce the illusion of life. In actual experience, we see only one mind internally,--our own; all other people we look upon externally: and a story, therefore, which lays bare to us one mind and only one is more in tune with life itself than a story in which many minds are searched by an all-seeing eye. Also, a story told in the third person from the point of view which has been ill.u.s.trated from Jane Austen's novels enjoys nearly every advantage of a narrative told in the first person by the leading actor, without being enc.u.mbered by certain of the most noticeable disadvantages.

=3. The Rigidly Restricted Point of View.=--For the sake of concreteness, however, it is often advisable for the author writing in the third person to restrict his point of view still further, and, foregoing absolutely the prerogative of omniscience, to limit himself to an att.i.tude merely observant and entirely external to all the characters. In such a case the author wears, as it were, an invisible cap like that of Fortunatus, which permits him to move unnoticed among his characters; and he reports to us externally their looks, their actions, and their speech, without ever a.s.suming an ability to delve into their minds. This rigidly external point of view is employed frequently by Guy de Maupa.s.sant in his briefer fictions; but although it is especially valuable in the short-story, it is extremely difficult to maintain through the extensive compa.s.s of a novel. The main advantage of this point of view is that it necessitates upon the part of the author an att.i.tude toward his story which is at all moments visual rather than intellectual. He does not give a ready-made interpretation of his incidents, but merely projects them before the eyes of his readers and allows to each the privilege of interpreting them for himself. But, on the other hand, the reader loses the advantage of the novelist's superior knowledge of his creatures: and, except in dramatic moments when the motives are self-evident from the action, may miss the human purport of the scene.

=Two Tones of Narrative, Impersonal and Personal: 1. The Impersonal Tone.=--In employing every phase of the external point of view except the one which has been last discussed, the author is free to choose between two very different tones of narrative,--the impersonal and the personal. He may either obliterate or emphasize his own personality as a factor in the story. The great epics and folk-tales have all been told impersonally. Whatever sort of person Homer may have been, he never obtrudes himself into his narrative; and we may read both the ”Iliad” and the ”Odyssey” without deriving any more definite sense of his personality than may be drawn from the hints which are given us by the things he knows about. No one knows the author of ”Beowulf” or of the ”Nibelungen Lied.” These stories seem to tell themselves. They are seen from n.o.body's point of view, or from anybody's--whichever way we choose to say it. Many modern authors, like Sir Walter Scott, instinctively a.s.sume the epic att.i.tude toward their characters and incidents: they look upon them with a large unconsciousness of self and depict them just as any one would see them. Other authors, like Mr. William Dean Howells, strive deliberately to keep the personal note out of their stories: self-consciously they triumph over self in the endeavor to leave their characters alone.

=2. The Personal Tone.=--But novelists of another cla.s.s prefer to admit frankly to the reader that the narrator who stands apart from all the characters and writes about them in the third person is the author himself. They give a personal tone to the narrative; they a.s.sert their own peculiarities of taste and judgment, and never let you forget that they, and they alone, are telling the story. The reader has to see it through their eyes. It is in this way, for example, that Thackeray displays his stories,--pitying his characters, admiring them, making fun of them, or loving them, and never letting slip an opportunity to chat about the matter with his readers.

Mr. Howells, in Section XV of his ”Criticism and Fiction,” comments adversely on Thackeray's tendency ”to stand about in his scene, talking it over with his hands in his pockets, interrupting the action, and spoiling the illusion in which alone the truth of art resides”; and in a further sentence he condemns him as ”a writer who had so little artistic sensibility, that he never hesitated on any occasion, great or small, to make a foray among his characters, and catch them up to show them to the reader and tell him how beautiful or ugly they were; and cry out over their amazing properties.” This sweeping condemnation of the narrative att.i.tude of one of the best-beloved of the great masters sounds just a little bigoted. It is true, of course, that the strictest artists in fiction, like Guy de Maupa.s.sant, prefer to tell their tales impersonally: they leave their characters rigidly alone, and allow the reader to see them without looking through the author's personality. But there is a type of literature wherein the chief charm for the reader lies in the fact that he is permitted to see things through the author's mind. When we read Charles Lamb's essay on ”The South Sea House,” we read it not so much to look at the deserted and memorable building as to look at Elia looking at it. Similarly many readers return again and again to ”The Newcomes” not so much for the pleasure of seeing London high society as for the pleasure of seeing Thackeray see it. The merit, or the defect, of the method in any case is a question not of rules and regulations but of the tone and quality of the author's mind. Whether or not he may safely obtrude himself into his fictions depends entirely on who he is. This is a matter more of personality than of art: and what might be insufferable with one author may stand as the main merit of another. For instance, the greatest charm of Sir James Barrie's novels emanates from the author's habit of emphasizing the personal relation between himself and his characters. The author's many-mooded att.i.tude toward Sentimental Tommy is a matter of human interest just as much as anything that Tommy feels himself.

Let us admit, then, in spite of Mr. Howells, that the author of fiction has a right to a.s.sert himself as the narrator, provided that he be a person of interest and charm. It remains for us to consider the various moods in which, in such a case, the writer may look upon his story. The self-obliterating author endeavors to hide his own opinion of the characters, in order not to interfere with the reader's independence of judgment concerning them; but the author who writes personally does not hesitate to reveal, nor even to express directly, his admiration of a character's merits or his deprecation of a character's defects. You will seek in vain, in studying the fict.i.tious people of Guy de Maupa.s.sant, for any indication of the author's approval or disapproval of them; and there is something very admirable in this absolute impa.s.siveness of art. But on the other hand, there is a certain salutary humanness about an author who loves or hates his characters just as he would love or hate the same sort of people in actual life, and writes about them with the glow of personal emotion. Sir James Barrie often disapproves of Tommy; sometimes he feels forced to scold him; but he loves him for a' that: and we feel instinctively that the hero is the more truthfully delineated for being represented by a friend.

=The Point of View as a Factor in Construction.=--It will be gathered from the foregoing discussion of the various points of view in narrative that no one of them may be p.r.o.nounced absolutely better than the others. But this much may be said dogmatically: there is always one best point of view from which to tell any given short-story; and although in planning a novel the author works with far less technical restriction, there is almost always one best point of view from which to tell a given novel. Therefore, it is advisable for the author to determine as early as possible, from a studious consideration of his materials, what is the best point of view from which to tell the story he is planning, and thereafter to contemplate his narrative from that standpoint and that only. Furthermore, the interest of art demands that the point of view selected shall, if possible, be maintained consistently throughout the telling of the story. This, however, is a very difficult matter; and only in very recent years have even the best writers grown to master it. The novels which have been told without a single violation of this principle are very few in number.

But the fact remains that any unwarrantable breakdown in the point of view selected diseconomizes the attention of the reader. It is unfortunate, for instance, that Thomas Bailey Aldrich, in ”Marjorie Daw,” should have found it necessary, after telling almost the entire tale in letters, to s.h.i.+ft suddenly to the external point of view and end the story with a few pages of direct narrative. Such an unexpected variation of method startles and to some extent disrupts the attention of the reader, and thereby detracts from the effect of the thing to be conveyed.

Henry James and Mr. Kipling exhibit, in their several ways, extraordinary mastery of point of view; and their works may very profitably be studied for examples of this special phase of artistry in narrative. The very t.i.tle of ”What Maisie Knew”, by Henry James, proclaims the rigidly restricted standpoint from which the narrative material is seen. In Mr. Kipling's tale, ”A Deal in Cotton,” which is included in ”Actions and Reactions,” the interest is derived chiefly from the trick of telling the story twice,--first from the point of view of Adam Strickland, and the second time from the point of view of Adam's native body-servant, who knew many matters that were hidden from his master.

=The Point of View as the Hero of the Narrative.=--In certain special cases the point of view has been made, so to speak, the real hero of the story. Some years ago Mr. Brander Matthews, in collaboration with the late H. C. Bunner, devised a very clever narrative ent.i.tled ”The Doc.u.ments in the Case.” It consisted merely of a series of numbered doc.u.ments, widely different in nature, presented with neither introduction nor comment by the authors. The series contained clippings from various newspapers, personal letters, I. O. U's, race-track reports, p.a.w.n-tickets, letter-heads, telegrams, theatre programmes, advertis.e.m.e.nts, receipted bills, envelopes, etc. In spite of the diversity of these materials, the authors succeeded in fabricating a narrative which was entirely coherent and at all points clear. The main interest, however, lay in the novelty and cleverness of the point of view; and though such an exaggerated technical expedient may be serviceable now and then for a special sort of story, it is not of any general value. A point of view that attracts attention to itself necessarily distracts attention from the story that is being represented; and in a narrative of serious import, the main emphasis should be thrown upon the thing that is told rather than upon the way of telling it.

REVIEW QUESTIONS

1. In what ways is the impression of a narrative dependent on the point of view selected by the author?