Abstract
This chapter sets out a key theme of the book: the flexibility and ambiguity of point of view in Jane Austen’s fiction. Bray argues against those critics who have posited the existence of a single, totalising perspective in her writing, demonstrating instead that even those passages which appear to be monologic on closer inspection often contain a variety of subjective points of view, both individual and collective, through the stylistic technique known as free indirect discourse. This technique is introduced and defined, and the consequences of its prevalence in Austen’s fiction for the concept of the figure of ‘the omniscient narrator’ considered. Through particular attention to Emma, Bray shows how Austen’s style challenges the existence of this figure, and the wider concept of omniscience.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsNotes
- 1.
Lady Susan will be discussed at more length, in relation to the complexity of epistolary form in Austen, in Chap. 5.
- 2.
Throughout this book the most recent authoritative Austen texts, the Cambridge University Press edition under the general editorship of Janet Todd, will be referenced.
- 3.
Modality is discussed further, in relation to the concept of ‘shading’, in Chap. 7.
- 4.
The next three chapters will detail more features of FIS, FIT and FIW, alongside other categories of speech, thought and writing representation.
Works Cited
Adamson, S. 1994. From Empathetic Deixis to Empathetic Narrative: Stylisation and (De-)Subjectivisation as Processes of Language Change. Transactions of the Philological Society 92 (1): 55–88.
Alliston, A. 1996. Virtue’s Fault: Correspondences in Eighteenth-Century British and French Women’s Fiction. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Austen, J. (1816) 2005b. Emma. Edited by R. Cronin and D. McMillan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
———. 2006b. Juvenilia. Edited by P. Sabor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
———. (1811) 2006c. Sense and Sensibility. Edited by E. Copeland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
———. (1813) 2006d. Pride and Prejudice. Edited by P. Rogers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
———. (1818) 2006e. Northanger Abbey. Edited by B.M. Benedict and D. Le Faye. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bally, C. 1912a. Le Style Indirect en Français Moderne I. Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift 4: 549–556.
———. 1912b. Le Style Indirect en Français Moderne II. Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift 4: 597–606.
Banfield, A. 1982. Unspeakable Sentences. London and New York: Routledge.
Bender, J. 1987. Imagining the Penitentiary: Fiction and the Architecture of the Mind in Eighteenth-Century England. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
———. 1995. Making the World Safe for Narratology: A Reply to Dorrit Cohn. New Literary History 26 (1): 29–33.
Bray, J. 2003. The Epistolary Novel: Representations of Consciousness. London and New York: Routledge.
Brinton, L. 1980. Represented Perception: A Study in Narrative Style. Poetics 9: 363–381.
Cohn, D. 1978. Transparent Minds: Narrative Modes for Presenting Consciousness in Fiction. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
———. 1995. Optics and Power in the Novel. New Literary History 26 (1): 3–20.
Culler, J. 2004. Omniscience. Narrative 12 (1): 22–34.
Duckworth, A. 1975. ‘Spillikins, Paper Ships, Riddles, Conundrums and Cards’: Games in Jane Austen’s Life and Fiction. In Jane Austen: Bicentenary Essays, ed. J. Halperin, 279–297. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Epstein, J.L. 1985. Jane Austen’s Juvenilia and the Female Epistolary Tradition. Papers on Language and Literature 21 (4): 399–416.
Fludernik, M. 1993. The Fictions of Language and the Languages of Fiction: The Linguistic Representation of Speech and Consciousness. London and New York: Routledge.
———. 1996a. Linguistic Signals and Interpretative Strategies: Linguistic Models in Performance, with Special Reference to Free Indirect Discourse. Language and Literature 5 (2): 93–113.
———. 1996b. Towards a ‘Natural’ Narratology. London and New York: Routledge.
Gamer, M. 2000. Unanswerable Gallantry and Thick-Headed Nonsense: Rereading Box Hill. In Re-Reading Box Hill: Reading the Practice of Reading Everyday Life, ed. W. Galperin. Romantic Circles Praxis Series. http://www.rc.umd.edu/praxis/boxhill/gamer/gamer.html
Genette, G. 1988. Narrative Discourse Revisited. Translated by J.E. Lewin. Ithaca and New York: Cornell University Press.
Gibbons, A., and S. Whiteley. 2018. Contemporary Stylistics: Language, Cognition, Interpretation. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Harris, J. 1989. Jane Austen’s Art of Memory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Jaffe, A. 1991. Vanishing Points: Dickens, Narrative, and the Subject of Omniscience. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Jefrries, L., and D. McIntyre. 2010. Stylistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kaplan, D. 1987. Female Friendship and Epistolary Form: Lady Susan and the Development of Jane Austen’s Fiction. Criticism 29 (2): 163–178.
Lascelles, M. (repr. 1995) 1939. Jane Austen and Her Art. London and Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Athlone Press.
Leech, G., and M. Short. 2007. Style in Fiction: A Linguistic Introduction to English Fictional Prose. 2nd ed. Harlow: Pearson.
Levine, G. 2000. Box Hill and the Limits of Realism. In Re-Reading Box Hill: Reading the Practice of Reading Everyday Life, ed. W. Galperin. Romantic Circles Praxis Series. http://www.rc.umd.edu/praxis/boxhill/levine/levine
Lodge, D. 1990. After Bakhtin: Essays on Function and Criticism. London and New York: Routledge.
Mandal, A. 2005. Language. In Jane Austen in Context, ed. J. Todd, 23–32. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Miller, D.A. 1988. The Novel and the Police. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press.
Neumann, A.W. 1992. Free Indirect Discourse in the Eighteenth-Century English Novel: Speakable or Unspeakable? In Language, Text and Context: Essays in Stylistics, ed. M.J. Toolan, 113–135. London and New York: Routledge.
Palmer, A. 2004. Fictional Minds. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press.
Pascal, R. 1977. The Dual Voice: Free Indirect Speech and Its Functioning in the Nineteenth-Century European Novel. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Royle, N. 1991. Telepathy and Literature: Essays on the Reading Mind. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Simpson, P. 1993. Language, Ideology and Point of View. London and New York: Routledge.
Southam, B.C. 1964. Jane Austen’s Literary Manuscripts: A Study of the Novelist’s Development Through the Surviving Papers. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sternberg, M. 1978. Expositional Modes and Temporal Ordering in Fiction. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Stockwell, P. 2002. Cognitive Poetics: An Introduction. London and New York: Routledge.
Sutherland, K. 2005a. Chronology of Composition and Publication. In Jane Austen in Context, ed. J. Todd, 12–22. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Todd, J., and L. Bree. 2008. Introduction and Notes. In Austen, J. 2008. Later Manuscripts, ed. J. Todd and L. Bree. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wales, K., ed. 2001. A Dictionary of Stylistics. 2nd ed. Harlow: Pearson.
Watson, N.J. 1994. Revolution and the Form of the British Novel, 1790–1825: Intercepted Letters, Interrupted Seductions. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Bray, J. (2018). Point of View. In: The Language of Jane Austen. Palgrave Studies in Language, Literature and Style. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-72162-0_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-72162-0_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-72161-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-72162-0
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)