Essay Title - Any choice of narrator carries gender implications in the Romantic period. Discuss in relation to Walter Scott's Heart of Midlothian and Redgauntlet, and Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice or Mansfield Park.
For the novelist, forming the persona of a narrator involves many creative factors ultimately influential to the narrative structure of the text as a whole. The character of the narrator, their level of presence in the narrative and consequent relationship between narrator and reader, and whether the narrative is conveyed in first or third person are just some of the considerations to be made. Austen and Scott were contemporaries of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, writing in a patriarchal society lacking in opportunity for female members of society outside of marriage and motherhood. The domains of law, medicine, the military and religion were all male-dominated professions. Having said this, the female writer was prolific in the eighteenth century - both writing a large proportion of published novels in this period and also forming the majority of the novel’s readership. Regardless of the writer’s sex, it is inevitable that the novel will be influenced by the social codes of conduct, opinions and attitudes of its time. As Konigsberg observes in regard to Pride and Prejudice, ‘the focus of the novel is certainly the internal consciousness of Elizabeth Bennet, but personal psychology is intimately related to societal relationships and those who are primarily defined and developed through verbal communication.’ However, as this essay will aim to prove, it is not merely individual characters and events who inform us of wider societal issues; the novelist’s choice of narrator can often bring such issues to our attention through a process of implication brought about by our observation of their character, attitude, presence and other factors.
The narrator of Pride and Prejudice is regarded as third-person omniscient and consequently provides us with insight and knowledge that is unavailable to any one character individually. Miller believes that this choice of narrator by Austen creates a reading atmosphere in which we feel as though we are eavesdropping on scenes intended for nobody in particular - ‘a truly out-of-body voice, so stirringly free of what it abhorred as “particularity” or “singularity” that it seemed to come from no enunciator at all’ Although the narrator maintains a certain professional distance from events that take place in the novel and so exhibits no real characteristics in the nature of its voice, it does create a particular empathy in the reader toward Elizabeth Bennet above all other characters. The weighting of Elizabeth-based narratives and the information chosen to be shared with the reader clearly aims to follow her story sympathetically and with her best interests at heart. As a result we begin to see matters from Elizabeth’s viewpoint, to the extent which the narrator is often able to let the dialogue do the talking; in the words of Konigsberg, ‘because we are sufficiently enlightened by now, the narrative voice need not explain much and can remain unobtrusive throughout these scenes’ An all-seeing narrator also allows us to see what would otherwise be off bounds as in Austen’s world, literary and real, ‘emotions are essentially private or expressed only to a limited few – a sister or a close friend.’ Through the omniscient yet detached narrator we are able to eavesdrop on vital dialogue.
Austen was the first novelist to employ a third person narrative voice for ‘creating in a sustained, convincing, and dramatic way the psychic dimension of character.’ Her predecessors and many of her contemporaries much preferred to narrate from the first-person perspective. Walter Scott was no exception. In the same way that Austen’s choice of third-person narrative does not necessarily dictate a distant relationship between narrator and narrative, neither does Scott’s preference of a first-person narrative suggest that the narrator will be closely aligned with the events and characters of the novel. Scott’s choice of narrative is actually more characteristic of an eyewitness account where the storyteller has no active role in the action they are describing. Both Redgauntlet and The Heart of Midlothian also regularly draw attention to the role of the narrator, a point which Rignall observes in his reading of narrative voice in Redgauntlet, ‘impersonal narration…repeatedly emphasizes the act of narration itself, points to the shaping power of the imagination in the construction of history.’ In stark contrast to Austen’s narrator - who appears to narrate undercover, so integrated with the action is their voice - Scott provides us with a narrator aware of his role and largely removed from the events of the novel.
We have touched briefly on the lack of opportunities available to women in the nineteenth century and inevitably such issues cross over into the literary world. While male protagonists could succeed as soldiers, lawyers, doctors…to name but a few of the respectable careers on offer, the success of a woman was largely measured against her ability to find a wealthy husband within the correct time frame. Each gender was therefore, an expert in entirely different fields, consequently, giving the male narrator the upper hand with resources from the worlds of law, medicine, military and religion at his fingertips. For example, although details of the narrator in The Heart of Midlothian are few and far between, we are clearly being told the story from a masculine viewpoint. Only a male narrator is able to observe men in particular circles and comment extensively on experience in the professions already mentioned. Even in the early scene involving the carriage overturning that serves to introduce Mr. Pattieson, requires a male part in order to carry the story further; a nineteenth century woman would not be as knowledge on law and would certainly not be permitted to drink wine with the lawyers as Mr. Pattieson, our narrator does. Clearly there were social and educational spheres with related locations where a female narrator could not accurately and feasibly write from.
In this respect, Pride and Prejudice is often seen as a ‘female novel’ because it is concerned with a female protagonist and the issues and concerns of a woman’s world. In Miller’s discussion of Austen’s work, he refers to this inclination to label her novels as female texts, ‘like a handbag or fragrance, the works of Jane Austen were deemed a ‘female thing’; and just as they were considered to bespeak the most distinctive depths of womanly being, so they were equally regarded as unreadable by those out of their natural element there.’ This is to suggest that the novels are seen as primarily suitable for female readers. However, it is not entirely true to say that Austen’s novels are concerned only with the female world. Although the narrator presents us with a story focused on Elizabeth Bennet, largely in the setting of the female domain of country house and grounds, this is not to say that the novel disregards issues of a more general and societal vein. Eagleton and Pierce argue that ‘even though Jane Austen’s novels are set in the drawing-room and the park, rather than on the battle-field of the Napoleonic Wars, her central concern is with the public world.’
Mukherjee draws her own conclusion from Austen’s tendency to document the transition between childhood and wifehood, stating that ‘by focusing on this brief time-span in the female life cycle, she corroborates the view that a wedding is the climactic event in a woman’s life.’ However, this does not take into consideration Austen’s background and identity as a woman; writing in a patriarchal society certain avenues of literary expression were clearly closed to her for the reasons we have discussed previously. More accurately, we can deduce that Austen what writing from experience and was not necessarily driven to write on topics that she agreed with or felt strongly about. In her creation of the narrator in Pride and Prejudice, as in many of her novels, as a female writer Austen is able to use an accepted female setting to present thoughts and opinions which would perhaps otherwise be an impossibility. Heroines of the time were frequently portrayed as the weaker sex and cast in restrictive roles in trivial settings so of course, Austen cannot express openly feminist perspectives at this time in history. However, she does allow herself more freedom by injecting subtle irony into the narrative. Even the very first line of the novel suggests a tongue-in-cheek attitude to contemporary views of a woman’s ambitions and role: ‘It is a truth universally known, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.’ The use of ‘must’ immediately makes us question whether this really is or should be a fact. It also serves to raise the issue of the fickle nature of the factors that are used to measure someone’s worth, such beliefs are epitomized by the comic figure of Mrs. Bingley, and the fact that we are amused so consistently by her only reinforces the ridiculous nature of the concept of social status and financial standing being held more important than good character. Hardy recognises Austen’s use of the narrator to present unconventional ideas in what seems a conventional template, ‘in terms of narrative mode and structure, her work takes elements of the conventional novel and quietly subverts them, without revealing any crack on the surface.’ The narrator provides us with all the information we need before standing back to allow us to reach our own conclusions. In this respect we can perhaps look to the potential readership of Austen’s novels for other gender implications of the novel. If we believe the majority of readers to be middle-class women then we can perhaps assume that they are searching an escape from the status quo and would gain satisfaction from the opportunity to read between the lines of the evidence which is given by the narrator, referred to by Konigsberg as the primary effect of Pride and Prejudice -
‘it achieves its primary effect by focusing on a character’s perceptions of reality and by involving the reader in the very act of perceiving.’ The act of piecing together the information we are given is made possible by the type of narrator created by Austen and the implication is that the restricted female reader will empathise with Elizabeth Bennet, as Konigsberg suggests, ‘the emphasis of the drama is still on the outside, on the interplay of characters, and we are allowed the satisfaction of interpreting figures for ourselves, unswayed by the heroine’s prejudice, though we generally can surmise what is going on inside of her.’
The narrator leads us towards an understanding of what qualities should be deemed important in a strong woman. For example, we are told that Elizabeth Bennet frequently neglects her piano practice, a habit which any code of conduct book of the time would frown upon. Monaghan argues that Austen is much more concerned with indicators of maturity that are concerned with morals - ‘Their education is complete so far as Jane Austen is concerned once they have corrected certain failings in judgment and/or feeling’ The narrator does not express these opinions formally as this would be stepping over the mark with regard to what a woman can write. Instead, the narrator almost passively presents what happens and allows the reader to construct the inevitable conclusion, in the words of Hardy, ‘in the moral intelligence she imparts to her heroines, their individuality is stressed through the quality of their interaction with others.’ To conclude on Austen’s creative reaction to a restrictive literary world for the female writer, what we are presented with is more social commentary masquerading as comedy of manners.
In some ways, Scott and Austen have much in common. For example, it seems that Scott would have shared Austen’s belief that success for a woman does not lie solely in the act of marrying a wealthy man. As Williams notes, ‘Scott was also interested in the kind of woman whose devotion to a cause was stronger than her devotion to a man, and he did not think it was absolutely necessary for a woman to get married. We have already noted that Austen was restricted from expressing such an opinion as it would obviously be attacking the status quo of the early nineteenth century. But in the same way that Austen doctors her narrator to allow freer expression, it can perhaps be argued that Scott moves towards a similar goal using a slightly different narrator technique. The women of Scott’s novels were largely well-liked as ‘they are – usually – morally stronger than men, but they do not defy them, and their self-sacrifice…has no limits.’ This seems to suggest that Scott stayed within the boundaries of what he thought would be accepted as a representation of a strong female, but was careful not to cross the line. Women are shown as perhaps morally stronger, but of course not academically or financially for example. Another method Scott uses to keep his readership onside is to present opinion through action and not narrator and therefore maintain distance between events and narrative voice. The emphasis is on historical happenings and the detached narrator is testament to this throughout the novel. By moulding the characters around the events instead of vice versa it is not immediately obvious that Scott’s female characters do not get married. The narrator is merely relaying events he has observed and has had no control or influence over how they appear to the reader.
The male narrator is much freer to discuss the issues taking place within society, and to some extent much more able, a point which is illustrated by Butler’s reaction to Jeanie’s proposal to beg mercy from the Royals, ‘“But you do not even understand the most ordinary words relating to a court,” said Butler; “by the ministry is meant not clergymen, but the king’s official servant.”’ This misunderstanding on Jeanie’s part serves to demonstrate the gap between such general knowledge of men and women at the time. Although women of in the middle and upper classes may have had more opportunity for reading and conversation to educate them, women from the lower classes would definitely have been inferior to men when it came to familiarity with the workings of social institutions and other topical issues. Scott’s narrators are notoriously withdrawn from the action of the novel. Only at the beginning of The Heart of Midlothian does the narrator actually have a role in the scene he is describing and even when he does digress to recount his own memories and experiences, these also often include the act of observation rather than participation. This can be seen in Mr. Pattieson’s recall of a childhood memory when he watches the preparation of the gallows: ‘I well remember the fright with which the schoolboys, when I was one of their number, used to regard the ominous signs of deadly preparation.’ Scott clearly chooses to narrate his novels using a process of detached observation and illustrating his narrative with characters of all types. Many nineteenth century readers would have preferred Scott to Austen for this very reason, as Williams states, ‘most nineteenth century readers felt that Scott, whose canvas was extremely wide, was a truly great novelist, whereas Jane Austen was not fully appreciated for some time. Perhaps this reflects the assumption that women’s concerns are not really important.’ But as she goes on to suggest and as we have already discussed, ‘her work makes it clear that middle-class women in the early nineteenth century were not allowed to experience very much.’
The use of the first-person narrative by Scott brings up the issue of writing in the persona of your own gender. Taylor observes that ‘to create for the reader a world issuing from the mind of ‘I’ necessitates adopting the voice, manners, clothing, and feelings of such a person.’ This form of narrator does require an intense involvement and knowledge of that particular gender. It would perhaps be a difficult undertaking for Scott to write a first-person narrative in a female persona because of his lack of understanding and experience of that character. Austen gives us shared human experience, but only within a particular class and from the viewpoint of a woman; Scott provides us with a story encompassing all social classes but ultimately tells it through a masculine narrative. Characteristic of the realist novel, both novelists seem preoccupied with presenting a true representation of their sex. Characters of the opposite sex are obviously portrayed, but the narrative is secured by a voice that is generically their own. Scott seems uncomfortable with documenting the thoughts of women (and men) and prefers to illustrate character through dialogue and action. Regardless of method, it is evident that each novelist aims to present an account of what they deem to be everyday life. To return to Konigsberg who also noted Austen’s aim to capture the real world ‘a belief in individual capacity and in a stable, civilized society, a belief in a knowable, practical system of morality and conduct, and a strong belief in this world as it is lived from day to day mark all her books.’
Scott draws from the real subject matter of history and his own life experience. Both Redgauntlet and The Heart of Midlothian frequently focus on the violent aspects of society. Williams notes that he ‘wrote about violent societies and had also had some personal experience of violence, and this gave him a warm and deep sympathy with women, who were so often the victims.’ This helps us to identify the source of the chivalrous attitude towards women shown in both novels; Scott saw them as victims of society and narrated them plights accordingly. Scott clearly had strong feelings and emotions about the issues described in his novels. However, the style of the historic novel seems to have dictated his choice of narrator and consequently, his viewpoint is demonstrated more through action than the inner thoughts and observations of the narrator. In fact, the narrator rarely offers an actual opinion in either novel, more often he is offering what is the common opinion or consensus, using words such as ‘it seems…’
Incorporating a male narrator seems as close as the nineteenth century novelist could get to creating a neutral narrator. As an eyewitness with admission to almost all social spheres of society on some level, the male narrator is able to provide a valid and representative account of history. The historical novel is often seen as Scott’s forte and much of success can be related to his choice of narrator; the use of a male narrator enables Scott to blend him into the background, make him the invisible man so to speak. The importance of the historical events would have been paramount to Scott and having a neutral narrator would clearly serve this purpose. For Austen, becoming a published author would have repercussions other than those of critical acclaim, for during this time English society associated a female’s entrance into the public sphere with a loss of femininity. Consequently Austen chose to publish anonymously and so protect her privacy and maintain respect as a woman. Political factors may also have affected her decision as the Napoleonic Wars of 1800-1815 was a time of great government censorship of literature. Scott’s choice of narrative voice would have largely protected him from such censorship; a historical novel would clearly attract less attention than a supposed comedy of manners narrated with a biased towards a strong female character.
The choice of narrator clearly does have wider gender implications. The issue on inequality between men and women in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century society crosses over to the literary world to very similar effect. A novelist that wishes to present an opinion contrary to popular beliefs can employ different methods of narrative voice. It also seems that the choice of narrator is inevitably related back to the gender of the novelist and consequent assumptions made. Whatever the viewpoint of the novel, the narrator has as much influence over the tone and meaning, as the characters and events do over plot and storyline.
Bibliography
Attitudes to Class in the English Novel, From Walter Scott to David Storey, Mary Eagleton and David Pierce (Thames and Hudson Ltd, 1986)
Jane Austen, Meenakshi Mukherjee (Macmillan Education, 1991)
Jane Austen’s Heroines, John Hardy (Routledge & Kegan, 1984)
Jane Austen in a Social Context, Edited by David Monaghan (Macmillan Press, 1981)
Jane Austen, or The Secret of Style, D. A Miller (Princeton University Press, 2003)
Male Novelists and Their Female Voices: Literary Masquerades, Anne Robinson Taylor (Whitston Publishing Company, 1981)
Narrative Technique in the English Novel: Defoe to Austen, Iva Konigsberg (Archon, 1985)
Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen (David Campbell Publishers, 1991)
Realist Fiction and the Strolling Spectator, John Rignall (Routledge, 1992)
Redgauntlet, Sir Walter Scott (The Aldine Press, 1957)
The Heart of Midlothian, Sir Walter Scott (The Aldine Press, 1956)
Women in the English Novel 1800-1900, Merryn Williams (Macmillan Press, 1984)
