Narrator in Pride and prejudice

[oohnana24]

I feel Austen cleverly used the narrator to her advantage, as being a vehicle in causing shock and surprise in her readers. The story is clearly built upon the prejudice characters have on each other in conjunction with the prejudice society has upon the characters. Austen involves us, the readers, by using the narrator as a forced guide in prejudice fueled judgements of the characters, only to be overturned later when the true nature of the character comes about, hence causing shock and surprise. We learned in the Introduction that this book was originally titled First Impressions, and I believe Austen, through the narrator, creates these first impressions, sometimes before the character is even introduced, in the minds of the reader.

For example, let's take the introduction of Mr. Darcy. After discussing his dance partners the narrator goes on to make absolute judgement: "His character was decided. He was the proudest, most disagreeable man in the world, and everybody hoped that he would never come there again. (58)" What other choice do us readers have but to dislike the man right off the bat. The narrator boasts about Mr. Bingley's behavior amongst the guests only to contrast it with the miserable behavior of Mr. Darcy, even using the word "only" when describing his few dance partners. The narrator's use of "only" to describe his dance partners after the praiseworthy behavior of Bingsley clearly adds weight to the already negative impression the narrator is painting for us.

The narrator also offers biased opinions of Mr. Collins and Mrs. Bennet, just to name a few. At the open of Chapter 15, the narrator steers us strongly in the direction of a favorable opinion of Mr. Collins. Contrastly, at the end of the first chapter, Austen's narrator gives us a direct and clear opinion of Mrs. Bennet. Granted, she is clearly a fool, but why such a strong opinion, by the narrator nonetheless, so soon? "She was a woman of mean understanding, little information, and uncertain temper. When she was discontented she fancied herself nervous" 53. Austen makes sure the reader is involved and heavily invested with emotion through the narrator's direction. By doing this, Austen controls the reader and the shock value of the character's actions.

Austen aligns the narrator with Elizabeth, who is trustworthy in the story therefore causing the narrator's opinions to be believed as trustworthy. Just like Elizabeth's imperfect way of thinking, the reader, along with many characters, make false judgement, based on prejudice thus creating the name of the game: shock value.

[Gladys]

As I read the novel, the narrator plays highly amusing games with all her characters and with her reader. Irony is everywhere.


At the open of Chapter 15, the narrator steers us strongly in the direction of a favorable opinion of Mr. Collins.

Can you mean this!

[kasie]

But who is 'the Narrator'?

John Mullen, in his recent book What Matters in Jane Austen, writes of her introduction of 'free indirect style to English Fiction, filtering her plots through the consciousness of her characters.' The linking 'narrative' passages are frequently not in the voice of an objective observer but in the indirectly reported voice of one of the characters.

To take the example quoted by the OP, the judgement of Mr Darcy's behaviour after the ball, whose opinion is this? The clue comes in the passage that follows: 'Amongst the most violent against him was Mrs Bennet, whose dislike of his general behaviour was sharpened into particular resentment by his having slighted one of her daughters.'

Similarly, the famous opening line, the 'truth universally acknowledged...' sounds like a sweeping statement on behalf of the objective/omniscient narrator/author, Austen herself, but who is the first character to speak? It is again Mrs Bennet. Rewrite the opening as direct speech and you get something like 'But Mr Bennet, everyone knows that a man who has a fortune...' which would certainly plunge the reader straight into the story but is somehow less arresting than the indirect rendering Austen chose to make.

Since I realised what Austen was doing - and it has taken me some time to arrive at the understanding, I am somewhat slow on the uptake - I have re-read her writing with increased pleasure and admiration of her art.

[kiki1982]

I have often thought that Austen sometimes shifts the character she is speaking through, as it were, up to the point that she uses a kind of Greek style chorus in Emma as she speaks through the whole community.

Although you could also argue that the very first statement is not one of Mrs Bennet's (does she actually speak in such an educated way?), but one from Mr Bennet who is wont to make such sly remarks. Certainly the idea that the single man in possession of a good fortune is 'the rightful property of one of [the surrounding families'] daughters' betrays some slight negativity on the narrator's part as to the process which is the topic of the novel. Whoever this narrator may be.

I've often thought of the beginning of P&P as a kind of start to the hunting season. There they see a deer (Mr Bingley) and they all take their guns to go after it. But the prize stag (Darcy) will have to be shot by the very best of hunters.

As it is, Mr Bennet is sitting in his library recalling the season maybe (Austen also returned to the start of Emma and Mr Woodhouse's dread concerning his chickens at the end of that novel) and thus starts with an observation after which his wife runs in to prove his point. The remark at the very end that 'I wish I could say, for the sake of [Mrs Bennet's] family, that the accomplishment of her earnest desire in the establishment of so many of her children produced so happy an effect as to make her a sensible, amiable, well-informed woman for the rest of her life; though perhaps it was lucky for her husband, who might not have relished domestic felicity in so unusual a form, that she still was occasionally nervous and invariably silly' is also a little on the opinionated side by the end, although it is nuanced by 'perhaps it was lucky for her husband'. Admittedly, Austen starts with 'I' (and she does come on the scene as auctorial narrator in Sense and Sensibility too hastened to a happy conclusion), but this time she drifts towards that strain again which ties in with the beginning.
We must not forget that Mr Bennet has been disappointed himself by marriage and that he may wish to observe that it is better for him that his wife be in bed with her nerves than that she is there to come and disturb him.

Just a thought.

[kasie]

Do you think there is maybe a certain comic irony in reporting what may be Mrs B's pronouncement in rather more elevated terms than she herself would have used?

[kiki1982]

Oh, yes, of course, it would an observation of Mr Bennet on the behaviour of the women and mothers around him! And Mrs Bennet doesn't see the peculiarity in what she's doing, whereas Mr Bennet feels that it is ridiculous and at the same time feels that he is embarrassed into going on his reconnaissance mission, so to say, to Bingley and Netherfield.

[Gladys]

Although you could also argue that the very first statement is not one of Mrs Bennet's (does she actually speak in such an educated way?), but one from Mr Bennet who is wont to make such sly remarks. Certainly the idea that the single man in possession of a good fortune is 'the rightful property of one of [the surrounding families'] daughters' betrays some slight negativity on the narrator's part as to the process which is the topic of the novel. Whoever this narrator may be.


It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters.


We begin with humour. Both universally acknowledged and truth are blatant hyperbole, as the narrator concedes in the second sentence. Just the sort of ironic thing the intelligent Mr Bennet would say, and shallow Mrs Bennet would believe.

The second sentence - also humorous in manner - is dazzlingly insightful philosophy/psychology, so typical of George Eliot several decades later.

[mona amon]

But who is 'the Narrator'?

John Mullen, in his recent book What Matters in Jane Austen, writes of her introduction of 'free indirect style to English Fiction, filtering her plots through the consciousness of her characters.' The linking 'narrative' passages are frequently not in the voice of an objective observer but in the indirectly reported voice of one of the characters.

To take the example quoted by the OP, the judgement of Mr Darcy's behaviour after the ball, whose opinion is this? The clue comes in the passage that follows: 'Amongst the most violent against him was Mrs Bennet, whose dislike of his general behaviour was sharpened into particular resentment by his having slighted one of her daughters.'

Similarly, the famous opening line, the 'truth universally acknowledged...' sounds like a sweeping statement on behalf of the objective/omniscient narrator/author, Austen herself, but who is the first character to speak? It is again Mrs Bennet. Rewrite the opening as direct speech and you get something like 'But Mr Bennet, everyone knows that a man who has a fortune...' which would certainly plunge the reader straight into the story but is somehow less arresting than the indirect rendering Austen chose to make.

While Austen's omniscient third person narrator does often show us the events through the consciousness of some of her characters (mainly Lizzy), she (the narrator) sometimes steps back to make observations about specific characters or the company as a whole. Here in the famous opening line, the narrator reflects on the universal human tendency of matchmaking to which parents of marriageable daughters are so susceptible, and although it is exquisitely ironic and something that Mr Bennet might say, to me it still sounds like the narrator in her own voice. Definitely not Mrs Bennet's.

[togre]

The narrator feels like some contemporary relating the events to a friend over tea. The manner is proper, but sometimes, as the narrator speaks the opinions of the characters, you look up to see her smirking over her teacup.

[kiki1982]

That's a great point.

[Gladys]

The narrator feels like some contemporary relating the events to a friend over tea. The manner is proper, but sometimes, as the narrator speaks the opinions of the characters, you look up to see her smirking over her teacup.

Not just sometimes but almost unremittingly. :wink5:

[kasie]

I don't think Jane Austen would ever 'smirk'.

'Smirk' implies some sort of superior attitude and I don't think Austen ever regards herself as better than any of her characters: she has great affection for them all, even the unremittingly silly Lydia or the insufferably complacent Emma. Her great skill is to allow these characters to reveal themselves, often by the device of concealing indirect speech/thoughts as apparent 'narrative': the characters thereby give themselves away without knowing it.

Again I wonder - who is the 'narrator - especially in Emma?