The Clash

I thought I'd write a post on the outside readings assigned for last week. To George, I definitely think you should assign the Dorrit Cohn article next time you teach this class, I found it incredibly helpful in understanding what exactly free indirect discourse is and how you can distinguish it from narration and dialogue. I particularly like when Cohn discusses narrated monologue as thought "suspend[ed] on the threshold of verbalization," a concept which seems to me very British and Remains of the Day. What a perfect technique to use for Elinor, who "struggled so resolutely against the oppression of her feelings." Elinor has to be careful because she cannot expose Lucy and Edward, both for her and their sakes. Narrated monologue "render[s] the content of the figural mind more obliquely than [quoted monologue], more directly than [psycho-narration]." In NMs, we read the thoughts which Elinor cannot articulate to anyone, the burdens which "almost overcome" her.

And so what are the benefits of this technique? I sometimes wonder why Austen employed it and the first conclusion I come to is that it allowed her to be more objective and remove herself even more than the third-person narrator did, because narrated monologues lack narrator commentary. Yet it also allows her to be consistant with her third-person narrator form, which seems so much more sophisticated than the then unperfected, epistolary first-person form. Cohn brings up something contradictory about NMs, and that is they "tend to commit the narrator to attitudes of sympathy or irony." So this objective narration amplifies "emotional notes"/sympathy or "false notes"/irony, which betrays at least narrator intention (we read the "false notes" of Fanny Ferrars' thoughts, and the sympathetic/ironic notes of Catherine Morland's thoughts--this brings to mind what George said last week about Jane Austen not allowing her readers any control--we think what the narrator wants us to think based on tone!). Cohn also discusses the clash of "romance and realism", of "a character's illusions and a narrator's worldliness," or better yet, of sensibility and sense! Isn't this Jane Austen to a T? At a time when male Romantic poets were colonizing the feminine "Sensibility," Jane Austen utilized a realistic narrator to objectively portray her characters' imaginations. Per-fec-tion!

I find myself looking for NMs constantly in the S&S reading, making me question whether or not the narrator is telling us a fictional fact about Elinor's thoughts, or if Elinor's thoughts are written in narrated monologue form. In most instances, I go for the latter. I've also been thinking about this line from Northanger Abbey after Catherine has been scolded by Henry: "Catherine was completely awakened." Could this be narrated monologue? On the next page, we get a peak into Catherine's thought process once again, and we realize she is not "completely awakened" because she imagines terror in every place but the middle of England. It seems to me that Catherine tells herself that she has banished all romanitc imaginings from her head, but in actuality has not. One of my favorite sections from S&S is when Elinor is rationalizing her secrecy just after Lucy has confessed her engagement to Edward. Despite Edward's "ill-treatment of herself," Elinor maintains that he has done nothing to "forfeit her esteem." These first few pages of Volume II weave in and out of narrated monologue, and we observe as Elinor gradually goes from being indignant to being sympathetic and blind, to the point of making Lucy the culprit and Edward the poor sufferer. Although we have little evidence of Edward giving Elinor encouragement, we must know from these pages that Elinor is in love with him, because even though they can't be together, she comforts herself with the "fact" that Edward would rather be with her than Lucy (something she can't possibly be sure of based on "sensibile" proof).

I thought Rose really hit on something last week when she said that Elinor is sensibile to the point of having sensibility. I picture sense and sensibility as sitting on opposite ends of a circle. Elinor conforms to societal conventions and Marianne conforms to Romantic ones, and both do it to a fault, and go around the circle to the other side, or off the circle altogether. In being true to her feelings, Marianne is very often unfeeling and unsympathetic, which are very un-Romantic traits. Her age-ism and sympathy contradict each other constantly. Romantics idealized youth, and yet delegitimizing the "infirm" Colonel Brandon is a very unsympathetic act. Like Rose stated, Elinor is often so sensible that she sits in silent, painful solitude, traits which definitely give in to the melancholy chic of Romanticism. Mary Wollstonecraft would have appreciated this blending of sense and sensibility, but I think she might have hoped for Elinor and Marianne to desire the balance, and a more healthy one, instead of balancing without always being conscious of it. After reading Maria and Mary, I think she also would have desired a more clear-cut, political message from the narrator.

About the Ann Banfield article...it went over my head. I read it but I really couldn't tell you what she was trying to say (I can't figure out what she meant by Es!). I'm not sure if I would give this to your next class. Cohn definitely made things clearer for me. Now I just have to apply it! I think you're definitely right, George, in that not many people know how to analyze form and I count myself as one of them. I find myself overwhelmed by prose. I can definitely pick it a part if I choose a section, but as I'm reading, I tend to look at content instead. But what I will say that I love about Austen's irony is that her zingers are delayed until the end of the sentence: "Lady Middleton was more agreeable than her mother, only in being more silent." Cause and effect? We think that Elinor is about to compliment Lady M by the words "more agreeable", which makes her insult pack even more punch and humor. I flagged two pages in the book which made me laugh the most, and I want to go back and examine why and how it worked. Sometimes I think the humor comes from the characters' unintentional irony in dialogue, like when Mrs. Palmer claims that she dotes on Elinor's drawings, says that she could look at them forever, and then immediately sits down and forgets about them. The Palmers and Mrs. Jennings make me a very happy girl! I think much of the humor comes from the reader understanding the characters' intentions better than they do themselves due to the control of the narrator's intentions and leading tone.

I promise I'll get better at this 'form' stuff! :)