Perhaps more importantly, these events are revealed through the POV char- acters and would thus remain inaccessible to the reader without the presence of these individuals. In many ways, the power struggle between fabula and sjuzhet can be read as a larger struggle between event and character. These power dynam- ics are complex, even between POV characters and non– POV characters. For example, Sansa Stark seems a fundamentally passive character with virtually no control over her own destiny.8From her betrothal to Joffrey, to her mistreatment
at the hands of the Lannisters, to her forced marriage to Tyrion, to her abduction by Littlefinger, the course of Sansa’s story arc is shaped by those around her. Conversely, Robb Stark is an active character whose maturation, military victo- ries, and marriage all unfold as a result of personal choices; as one of the five kings in the war of the same name, he obviously plays a prominent role in the story, and his decisions, both wise (governing Winterfell in the absence of his parents, adopting effective strategies on the battlefield) and imprudent (sending Theon Greyjoy to Pyke, marrying Jeyne Westerling), shape his fate. However,
recalling Mudrick’s critique of the “sentimental” tendency to read characters as “real human beings,” it is essential to note that Robb, like Sansa, is a pawn; just as Sansa’s course is shaped by the Lannisters and Littlefinger, Robb’s course is delineated by a powerful force beyond his control.
Consider Martin’s description of Robb’s destiny: “I knew [Robb would die] almost from the beginning. Not the first day, but very soon… . I killed Ned because everybody thinks he’s the hero… . The next predictable thing is to think his eldest son is going to rise up and avenge his father… . So immediately [killing Robb] became the next thing I had to do” (qtd. in Hibberd). However “active” Robb seems, he is ultimately subservient to the sequence of events as outlined by Martin. Sansa’s fate (like Robb’s) is predetermined by Martin’s outline, but if POV characters and non– POV characters alike are at the mercy of the fabula, the only potential means of asserting real power in this narrative is through dis- course. Fundamentally, Sansa’s status as a POV character grants her the power to influence the way the reader experiences and interprets events, even if the reader disagrees with her perception—indeed, the temptation to disagree with her only enhances what Mudrick calls the “primal energy” (215) that allows lit- erary characters to overcome the primacy of events. Granted, Sansa’s discursive power may seem passive given that Sansa and the other POV characters do not actually narrate the text, but rather, “focalize” it. However, since first- person narration is traditionally retrospective, focalization allows Sansa to challenge the hegemony of pre- planned events: the fabula may be predetermined, but the immediacy of Sansa’s internal perception of/reaction to events creates a direct and dynamic discourse. Conversely, Robb, who is never in control of the sjuzet and who is thus denied the discursive ability to perceive and react “in the moment,” is constrained entirely by the fixed fabula.
Focalization simultaneously grants Sansa a psychological vitality that belies her passivity. Consider the following passage, which recounts Sansa and Joffrey’s reconciliation the night of the Hand’s Tournament:
When Prince Joffrey seated himself to her right, she felt her throat tighten. He had not spoken a word to her since the awful thing had happened, and she had not dared to speak to him. At first she thought she hated him for what they’d done to Lady, but after Sansa had wept her eyes dry, she told herself that it had not been Joffrey’s doing, not truly. The queen had done it; she was the one to hate, her and Arya. Noth- ing bad would have happened except for Arya.
She could not hate Joffrey tonight. He was too beautiful to hate [GoT 30 Sansa
2: 250].
Here, Sansa’s entire thought process unfolds spontaneously as she rationalizes her forgiveness of Joffrey, first by blaming Lady’s death on Cersei, and then fault- ing Arya. In spite of her absurd logic, her thought process is clear: given her
longstanding incompatibility with Arya, and her desire to keep Cersei and Jof- frey on a pedestal, it is simply easier to criticize her younger sister. Obviously, the passage reveals Sansa’s naiveté and vanity, but it simultaneously conveys her sensitivity and self- consciousness. In a few short sentences, Martin paints a psy- chologically complex and honest portrait of his character through the directness of focalization.
This psychological slant of Martin’s series, as epitomized by his use of focal- ized discourse, is thus steeped heavily in Jamesian theory: “With Henry James, likewise, we witness the evolution of realism towards subjectivism and perspec- tivism, in part because of James’s psychological bent. According to James, the novel (unlike drama) can reveal to us the inner life of characters, and this is the essence of the genre” (Onega and Landa 18).9As Roy Pascal observes, this
approach grants James’s characters “the ‘feel of life’ … the feel of the choices open to them” (5), and indeed, the reader of A Song of Ice and Fire experiences
these choices firsthand through the perspectives of the characters. Even the most illogical decisions on the parts of these characters—Catelyn’s abducting Tyrion; Eddard’s revealing his discovery to Cersei; Arya’s “squandering” of Jaqen’s gift— are understandable through the revelation of the character’s thought process at the very moment that it takes place. Still, Martin simultaneously maintains a Jamesian objectivity; Mieke Bal describes variable focalization as an effective tool in creating “neutrality towards all the characters” (105), an observation which seems especially applicable in A Song of Ice and Fire given Martin’s deter-
mination to preserve moral ambiguity.
“Sansa Stark, handsome, clever, and rich,
with a comfortable home and happy disposition…”
Martin’s ability to maintain sympathy for Sansa through his discursive tech- nique, in spite of her narcissism, thoughtlessness, and misplaced priorities, seems strangely reminiscent of James’s most noteworthy predecessor in the realm of free- indirect discourse, Jane Austen.10Certainly, when one considers the cen-
trality of class- based prejudice to Sansa’s negative qualities, the comparison seems all the more fitting, for Austen’s supreme narrative achievement is built around a character who embodies similar prejudices. As Wayne C. Booth notes,
Jane Austen never formulated any theory to cover her own practice; she invented no term like James’s “central intelligence” or “lucid reflector” to describe her method of viewing the world of the book primarily through Emma’s own eyes… . But whether she was inclined to speculate about her method scarcely matters; her solution was clearly a brilliant one. By showing most of the story through Emma’s eyes, the author
insures that we shall travel with Emma rather than stand against her. It is not simply that Emma provides, in the unimpeachable evidence of her own conscience, proof that she has many redeeming qualities that do not appear on the surface; such evidence could be given with authorial commentary, though perhaps not with such force and conviction. Much more important, the sustained inside view leads the reader to hope for good fortune for the character with whom he travels, quite independently of the qualities revealed [245–6].
As in the case of Martin’s series, “Austen’s narrators and reflectors become vir- tually indistinguishable. When the narrator consistently places the narrative focus within a character’s consciousness (it happens throughout Emma), readers
may tend to see things from the character’s visual, psychological, and ideological perspective” (Morini 31), and the effect on the reader’s relationship with the character is significant. Austen’s oft- quoted assertion that in writing Emma, she
was creating a novel about a protagonist that no one would like (herself excluded) (Austen-Leigh 119), and the reality that readers have continued to gravitate toward Emma Woodhouse almost two- hundred years after the text’s initial pub- lication, has only served to reinforce the power of Austen’s narrative technique.11
Reviewing the previously quoted passage from Sansa’s second chapter in A Game of Thrones, one finds a smooth and logical transition from indirect dis-
course—“At first she thought she hated him for what they’d done to Lady” (GoT
30 Sansa 2: 250)—toward free- indirect discourse—“The queen had done it; she was the one to hate, her and Arya. Nothing bad would have happened except for Arya” (GoT 30 Sansa 2: 250). The following example from Emma follows a
similar trajectory and provokes a comparable blend of frustration and sympathy toward the focalizing heroine:
She was not struck by any thing remarkably clever in Miss Smith’s conversation, but she found her altogether very engaging … and so artlessly impressed by the appearance of every thing in so superior a style to what she had been used to, that she must have good sense and deserve encouragement. Encouragement should be given. Those soft blue eyes and all those natural graces should not be wasted on the inferior society of Highbury and its connections. The acquaintance she had already formed were unwor- thy of her [Austen 13].
As in the passage from A Game of Thrones, the narrator gradually “places himself
… directly into the experiential field of the character, and adopts the latter’s per- spective in regard to both time and place” (Pascal 9). The narrator thus forces the reader to do likewise, and though Emma’s condescension toward Harriet and the Martins is just as exasperating as Sansa’s worship of Joffrey, the discourse compels us to empathize with Emma and Sansa even as we disagree with them. Though Sansa is the most obvious example for such a comparison, several of Martin’s POV characters, if taken at the surface level or analyzed solely from
the perspective of other POV characters, would seem highly disagreeable, whether due to crudeness and hedonism (in the case of Tyrion), haughtiness and intolerance (in the case of Catelyn), aloofness and corruption (in the case of Theon), or even unspeakable iniquity (in the case of Jaime). However, through his use of free- indirect discourse, Martin never allows the reader to take a fully judgmental position toward the POV character, as we experience their moments of self- consciousness, self- doubt, and even self- loathing: whether it is Sansa’s depression following her father’s execution, Tyrion’s insecurity brought on by his deformities, Catelyn’s guilt regarding her contempt for Jon, Theon’s night- mares brought on by his crimes at Winterfell, or Jaime’s realization of just how irreversibly he has degraded both himself and the Kingsguard. Jaime is a partic- ularly striking example; Booth writes that “We have seen that inside views can build sympathy even for the most vicious character. When properly used, this effect can be of immeasurable value in forcing us to see the human worth of a character whose actions, objectively considered, we would deplore” (378). As in the case of Austen, Martin could allude to these complexities through the commentary of the third- person narrator, but it would not produce the same effect.
While Martin’s technique allows for the cultivation of a complex Austenian relationship between reader, narrator, and character—however unsympathetic that character may be—it likewise facilitates his creation of an ambiguous uni- verse in which monochromatic characters are given a chance to exist in shades of grey through discursive technique. Moreover, the ambiguity that defines Mar- tin’s narratorial perspectives can also be found in Austen, for as Massimiliano Morini has noted in his outstanding study of Austen’s narrative techniques, the author’s narrators “variously undermine their own authoritativeness and leave readers more or less stranded between the waves of conflicting interpretations” (19). Though Austen grants her narrators greater license and personality (occa- sionally allowing them to use the first person “I” even as she keeps their identities hidden) while Martin completely suppresses his narrator’s personality behind the personalities of his POV characters, both authors shun the idea of an unques- tionably authoritative narratorial voice. This technique prevents the reader from coming to a truly conclusive evaluation of the characters, their values, and the overarching “point” of the text.12
Still, the aforementioned comparisons belie the obvious fact that the fab- ulas of Austen and Martin are exceedingly incongruous. Pascal observes that
Jane Austen’s novels supply the preconditions one might consider necessary for the unhampered emergence of free indirect speech. They focus upon a small group of people who belong to one class and one cultural world, whose values, feelings, and thoughts, even if unknown, contain no mystery for them or for the narrator. They
do not lack plot, but the plot consists almost entirely of the changing attitudes of the characters to one another, so that their thoughts and feelings are the structural ele- ments of the story [Pascal 45].
Comparing Austen’s narrow view of society, her limited number of lead charac- ters, and her subdued plots with Martin’s sprawling social panoramic, his innu- merable protagonists, and his convoluted medieval romance seems an exercise in absurdity. Yet, this disparity, when studied in the context of the discursive similarities between the two writers’ narrational techniques, re- invokes the over- arching issue of event vs. discourse. If, as Pascal notes, the sequence of events in Austen’s novels is fundamentally conducive to the “emergence of free indirect speech,” then why does Martin, whose fabula stands in such contrast to Austen’s, utilize the same discursive technique?
Pascal’s assessment of Austen belies the fact that in spite of the ostensible simplicity and straightforwardness of her plots, Austen is a master of suspense and secrecy; it is a talent she displays from early on in her career, as the “gothic” mystery of Northanger Abbey gives way to a more humorous domestic mystery
regarding the scope of Catherine’s misreading of the Tilney household. Similarly, in the case ofEmma, the reader is so fully aligned with Emma’s perspective that
he or she misses vital clues regarding the true nature of Frank Churchill’s rela- tionship with Jane Fairfax. Though the scope and stakes of Martin’s plots seem inestimably larger than Austen’s courtships, his own understanding of how to build suspense within the preplanned events of the fabula is rooted in the same narrative principles of focalization and restriction.