An example of the kind o f ‘panoramic’ viewpoint which can be provided by an omniscient narrator is found at the beginning of Schreiner's Story o f an African Farm, (referred to above in section 2.4.ii) The following extract illustrates Simpson’s claim that this kind of narration allows a ‘bird’s-eye view’ or floating viewpoint’ (Simpson, 1993:63).
The full African moon poured down its light from the blue sky into the wide, lonely plain. The dry, sandy earth, with its coating of stunted 'karroo' bushes a few inches high, the low hills that skirted the plain, the milk-bushes with their long, finger like leaves, all were touched by a weird and an almost oppressive beauty as they lay in the white light.
In one spot only was the solemn monotony of the plain broken. Near the centre a small, solitary 'kopje' rose. Alone it lay there, a heap of round iron stones piled one upon another, as over some giant's grave. Here and there a few tufts of grass or small succulent plants had sprung up among its stones, and on the very summit a clump of prickly-pears lifted their thorny arms, and reflected, as from mirrors, the moonlight on their broad, fleshy leaves. At the foot of the 'kopje' lay the homestead. First, the stone-walled 'sheep-kraals' and Kaffir huts; beyond them the dwelling house - a square red-brick building with thatched roof. Even on its bare red walls, and the wooden ladder that led up to the loft, the moonlight cast a kind o f dreamy beauty, and quite etherealized the low brick wall that ran before the house, and which enclosed a bare patch of sand and two straggling sun-flowers. On the zinc roof of the great open wagon-house, on the roofs of the outbuildings that jutted from its side, the moonlight glinted with a quite peculiar brightness, till it seemed that every rib in the metal was of burnished silver.
Sleep ruled everywhere, and the homestead was not less quiet than the solitary plain.
In the farm-house, on her great wooden bedstead, Tant’ Sannie, the Boer-woman, rolled heavily in her sleep.
(Schreiner, The Story o f an African Farm, p.35)
The unrestricted viewpoint allows the heterodiegetic narrator to present a panoramic description from a position somewhere above the homestead. The
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moonlight pours ‘into’ the plain, highlighting the landscape which extends from the plain to the hills, but returns to centre on the dwelling. The deictics suggest first an impression of distance’ i.e., ‘it lay there’, and randomness, ‘Here and there a few tufts of grass’, before becoming more focused; ‘First the stonewalled sheep-kraals’ ‘beyond them the dwelling-house’, moving gradually closer to the farm house; ‘the low brick wall that ran before the house, and which enclosed a bare patch of sand and two straggling sun-flowers.’. The viewpoint has thus changed from panoramic, to a position which is closer and more keenly focused on the dwelling place. The narration includes evaluative adjectives (e.g. ‘lonely’, ‘stunted’, ‘weird’, ‘oppressive’, ‘solemn monotony’) which serve to produce a mysterious atmosphere, and emphasises the loneliness of the landscape and the contrasting potential welcome of the homestead. The viewing position initially emphasises the distance of the narrator from the homestead and its inhabitants, producing an impression such as that which might be experienced by a stranger coming upon the farm for the first time. In addition, the language forces the reader to read slowly, due to the presence of words with two and three syllables. The extract may be contrasted with the beginning of Gaskell's Wives and Daughters, where the preponderance of categorical assertions produces a
repetition of words with single syllables, reminiscent of the narrative form associated with folk-lore or children’s fairy tales.
In a country there was a shire, and in that shire there was a town, and in that town there was a house, and in that house there was a room, and in that room there was a bed, and in that bed there lay a little girl, wide awake and
longing to get up. (Gaskell, Wives and Daughters, p.35)
In both extracts, a similar spatial effect is achieved, as the point of view decreases in distance, moving closer to the dwelling place which will form the centre of the narrative, and, subsequently, both narratives move ‘inside’ the minds of the characters. The two extracts may also be compared in terms of temporal point of view,
the different impressions they provide in respect of the time dimension. In the former example, the temporal aspect interacts with the spatial dimension to provide an impression of the narrator standing motionless, gazing at the scene below, and the gradually narrowing focus, from panoramic viewpoint to specific detail, is consistent with a gradual movement towards the farm. In the latter example, by contrast, the rapidly co-ordinating phrases and indefinite article ‘a’, simultaneously suggest speed and vagueness i.e., this could be any shire, town, house, or little girl.
A similar effect is found in the following extract from The Handmaid’s Tale. Offred’s narrative contains, in Fowler’s terms, ‘flashbacks’, as Offred remembers her previous life. The narration sometimes moves from past to present tenses as the narrator combines narration of present events with remembrances of times past. Typically, Offred's present gives an impression of time moving slowly, reflecting the boredom and loneliness of Offred's present life, and may be contrasted with episodes where Offred remembers her previous life. The following extract is her remembrance of a time when she and her family are attempting to evade capture, and again the coordinating conjunctions help to provide an impression events moving rapidly.
Then Luke got back into the car, too fast, and turned the key and reversed [. . .] And then he began to drive very quickly, and after that there was the dirt road and the woods and we jumped out of the car and began to run.
(Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale, p.237)
3. 5 (ii) Ideological Point of View
In addition to the spatial and temporal aspects referred to above, the extract from Story o f an African Farm can also help to illustrate ‘ideological’ point of view, and brings us full circle to the relationship outlined at the beginning of Chapter Two, in which the author must attempt, in Booth’s terms, to ‘eliminate the distance’, between herself and her implied reader. As noted in section 2. 4 (ii), terms such as
‘Kaffir’ and ‘Boer’ are assumed to be familiar to the reader, who therefore infers something about the inhabitants of the dwelling and the relationship between them, due to his or her knowledge of South African history and culture. Ideology can thus be reflected in the text, i.e., can be seen to be a representation the way things are in a
society at a particular time. As such, the novel reproduces certain ways of thinking which are dominant (Simpson, 1993:5), and Schreiner’s text assumes that the
relationships which are portrayed between black and white are familiar and ‘common- sense’. By contrast, the relationship between men and women is problematized in Schreiner’s novel, and results in her work being hailed as an early feminist text. Thus, the ideologies of some of the characters are made explicit, and can be seen as an attempt by the author to communicate a message. This distinction may become clearer on examination of the following extract from Story o f an African Farm. In this
example, the kindly German overseer of the farm is dismissed for something he has not done. Seeking to understand what has happened, he asks a black woman, a person he considers to be friendly towards him, for information.
‘But what then is the matter? What may have happened since I left?,’ said the German, turning to the Hottentot woman who sat upon the step.
She was his friend; she would tell him kindly the truth. The woman answered by a loud, ringing laugh.
‘Give it him, old missus! Give it him!’
It was so nice to see the white man who had been master hunted down. The coloured woman laughed, and threw a dozen mealie grains into her mouth to chew. (Schreiner, The Story o f an African Farm. p. 90)
The contrast between the words spoken and the characters’ thoughts illustrates the overseer’s misconception of his relationship with the woman. His perception of her as a ‘friend’ and ‘kindly’, and her perception of him as her white ‘master’ shows a clash of views. Ideological point of view is also reflected in the various descriptions of
the characters according to their racial characteristics, i.e., ‘German’, ‘Hottentot’, ‘white man’, ‘coloured woman’. Fowler notes that
A proliferation of terms in some semantic field indicates an unusual preoccupation with a part of the culture’s or the writer’s experience.
(Fowler, 1996:219)
and it is not surprising that such terms are foregrounded in Schreiner’s novel. Her use of language reflects the ideology of her society, in which members are classified according to racial characteristics. While it is true that issues of race are tangential to the story, Schreiner’s focus being mainly on the position of the women characters, her writing reflects the ideology of the time and illustrates the apparent inability of the different races to integrate. In terms of ideological point of view, the novel is a complex mixture of power relationships, reflecting differences in status between Boer and German, black and white, men and women, but only consciously addresses the last.
The extract above therefore illustrates the way in which ideology can be reflected in the text, or can be symptomatic of a world view which is dominant at the time of writing. However, ideological point of view can be extended to encompass the way in which the ideologies of the characters can be represented as distinct from the implied author and/or one another, an issue which will be discussed further in section 3. 9 below.
The above discussion has considered the informational differences between first and third-person narration, and the potential advantages and disadvantages of each. In addition, I have discussed the way in which a narrative can present spatial, and temporal point of view, and reflect the ideological point of view of the time of writing. I have referred to the work of Genette and Rimmon-Kenan, and the way in which they categorise the different types of focalization, considering the distinction
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between ‘seeing’ and ‘speaking’. However, it becomes apparent that a more rigorous framework is needed to cope with complex narrative situations, such as those found in Jazz or The Stone Diaries. Fowler’s categories (Fowler, 1996) provide a simpler and more intuitively appealing means of attempting to describe point of view. Fowler’s discussion is based on identification of different narrative types according to linguistic criteria. The discussion is thus progressing from a concentration on narrative
classification which merely distinguishes between first and third-person narration, through a distinction between focalizer and focalized, to a much closer focus on the linguistic elements which enable us to identify the source of the focalization. I will now consider the models of analysis suggested by Fowler and its subsequent re working by Simpson.