Narrative Perspective

Definition of narrative perspective

What is the meaning or definition of a narrative perspective? Narrative perspective is the vantage point from which events of a story are filtered and then relayed to the audience.

There are different types of narrative perspectives or points of view (POV):

As the table shows, a narrative point of view varies according to the narrator's degree of participation in the story.

What are the types of narrative perspective?

There are five different types of narrative perspective:

• First-person narrative
• Second-person narrative
• Third-person limited narrative
• Third-person omniscient narrative
• Multiple points of view

Let's have a look at each of them in turn and their meaning.

What is a first-person narrative?

The first-person narrative perspective relies on first-person pronouns - I, we. The first-person narrator has a close relationship to the reader. The reader can get a deeper understanding of the first-person narrator's mind more than the other characters. However, the first person can only tell the audience their memories and restricted knowledge of events. The first-person cannot relate events or insights into other characters' minds, so this is a subjective narrative perspective.

Narrative perspective examples: Jane Eyre

In Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre (1847), the bildungsroman is narrated in the first-person point of view.

Narrative perspective analysis: Jane Eyre

The titular Jane Eyre describes events at the moment she experiences them, and the novel features a series of reflections on her early life. By looking at this example's point of view, we see that Jane Eyre imparts her loneliness to the reader because of her emphasis on the 'I'. Bronte establishes that Jane has never experienced a 'home' for herself, and because it is in the first person, it appears as a confession to the reader.

First-person narratives also allow narrators to witness an event or impart an alternative narrative perspective.

First-person narratives allow narrators to witness an event. - freepik (fig. 1)

In an inventive 'prequel' to Jane Eyre, Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), Jean Rhys has written a parallel novel that also uses first-person narrative. It explores Antoinette Cosway's (Bertha's) perspective before the events of Jane Eyre. Antoinette, a Creole heiress, describes her youth in Jamaica and her unhappy marriage to Mr Rochester. Antoinette's account is strange because she speaks, laughs, and yells in Wide Sargasso Sea but is silent in Jane Eyre. The first-person point of view allows Antoinette to reclaim her narrative voice and name, which means the novel features a postcolonial and feminist viewpoint.

The use of the first-person point of view emphasizes Antoinette's confusion when arriving in England. Antoinette requests sympathy from the reader, who knows what is happening to Antoinette and what will happen during the events of Jane Eyre.

What is a second-person narrative?

The second-person narrative perspective means the speaker narrates the story through second-person pronouns - 'You'. The second-person narrative is far less common in fiction than first or third-person and assumes that an implied audience is experiencing the narrated events along with the speaker. It has the immediacy of the first-person, yet calls attention to the process of narration which limits a back-and-forth involvement between narrator and audience.

Second-person narrative perspective examples

Tom Robbin's Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas (1994) is written in the second-person point of view:

Robbin's second-person point of view implies the narrator is in a difficult situation concerning the financial market. The point of view sets the tone for the whole novel, and emphasizes the narrator's distress which the reader has an ambiguous part of - is the reader a witness, or the active participant to the distress?

What is a third-person limited narrative?

Third-person limited is the narrative perspective where the narrative is focused on one character's limited point of view. Third-person limited narrative is the story's narration through the third-person pronouns: he / she / they. The reader has a certain amount of distance from the narrator so has a more objective view of events because they are not limited to the first-person narrator's eye.

Narrative perspective examples: James Joyce's Dubliners

Consider this extract from 'Eveline' in James Joyce's short story collection Dubliners (1914):

The reader has unique access to Eveline's dilemma about whether to leave her home. The distance between the reader and her point of view means that Eveline is isolated in her thoughts. Her uncertainty about her decision and other people's possible reactions emphasizes the fact that readers don't know what she is going to do, despite knowing about her inner thoughts.

What is a third-person omniscient narrative?

A third-person omniscient narrator provides an all-knowing point of view while still using third-person pronouns. There is an external narrator who assumes this all-knowing perspective. The narrator comments on multiple characters and their thoughts and perspectives on other characters. The omniscient narrator can inform the reader about plot details, inner thoughts, or hidden events that are happening outside of the characters' awareness or in places far away. The reader is distanced from the narrative.

Narrative perspectives - Pride and Prejudice

Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice (1813) is a famous example of the omniscient point of view

The narrator assumes they know and can reveal everything to the implied audience about Regency society. The 'truth universally acknowledged' implies a collective knowledge - or prejudice! - about relationships and links the themes of marriage and wealth presented in the novel.

What are multiple narrative perspectives?

Multiple narrative perspectives show the events of a story from the position of two or more characters. The multiple points of view create complexity in the narrative, develop suspense, and reveal an unreliable narrator - a narrator who offers a distorted or vastly different account of the narrative's events. The multiple characters have unique perspectives and voices, which helps the reader distinguish who is telling the story.

However, the reader needs to keep a close eye on who is speaking and the point of view being adopted at certain moments of the novel.

An example of multiple points of view is Leigh Bardugo's Six of Crows (2015), where the narrative switches between the six different perspectives on a single dangerous heist.

The difference between narrative perspective and point of view

What is the difference between the narrative perspective and the point of view in a story?

A point of view is a narration style, a method used by the author to present the character's perspectives of an event and their ideological viewpoints. Narrators tell the story, but the way they tell the reader the story is significant to the work's plot and themes.

In literature, the narrative point of view is crucial for understanding the perspectives of who is telling the story, and who sees the story.

How are narration and narrative perspective related?

Narration is how a story is told. The point of view is how the story is written and who is telling it. However, the narrative perspective encompasses the narrator's voice, point of view, worldview, and a focaliser (i.e. What the narrative is focused on).

The French Narrative theorist Gerard Genette coined the term focalization in Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method (1972). Focalization distinguishes between the narration and the perception of a story's events and becomes another term for point of view. According to Genette, who speaks and who sees are distinct issues. The three types of focalization are:

• Internal - The narrative is presented through one character's point of view and describes only what a given character knows.
• External - Events are recounted by a detached narrator who says less than the character knows.
• Zero - This refers to the third-person omniscient narrator, where the narrator knows more than any of the other characters.

Focalization is then the presentation of a scene through the subjective perception of a character. The nature of a given character's focalization is to be distinguished from the narrative voice.

What is a narrative voice vs. the narrative perspective?

The narrative voice is the narrator's voice as they recount the events of the story. The narrative voice is analysed by looking at the narrator's (which is either a character or author) spoken utterance - through their tone, style, or personality. As you can now recall, the meaning of narrative perspective is that it is the vantage point through which events are related.

The distinction between narrative voice and point of view is that narrative voice relates to the speaker and how they address the reader.

What is free indirect discourse?

Free indirect discourse presents the thoughts or utterances as if it is from a character's narrative perspective. Characters relate a direct speech with features of a narrator's indirect report of their point of view of events.

This statement allows a third-person narrative to use a first-person narrative perspective. One literary example is Virgina Woolf's Mrs Dalloway (1925):

Instead of 'Mrs Dalloway said,' I will buy the flowers myself 'Woolf writes:

Woolf uses free indirect discourse to add Clarissa Dalloway's more engaging opinions and observations to an otherwise bland narrator.

What is a stream of consciousness?

Stream of consciousness is a narrative technique. It is usually portrayed from the first person narrative perspective and attempts to replicate the character's thought processes and feelings. The technique includes interior monologues and a character's reflections on their motivations or ideological viewpoints. The narrative technique mimics incomplete thoughts or their changing viewpoint of an event. Stream of consciousness narratives are usually told in the first-person narrative perspective.

An example is Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale (1985), which uses a stream of consciousness to imply the narrator's recollection of her time as a handmaid. The novel flows with the narrator's thoughts, memories, emotions, and musings, yet the narrative structure is disjointed because of the past and present tense shifts.

The handmaid records her thoughts and witnessed accounts to a tape recorder. Atwood uses a stream of consciousness narrative for the reader to piece together the handmaid's thoughts and recollections of her past experiences. The reader then must contend with an account of the narrator forgetting or contradicting herself.

A stream of consciousness narrative is often used to allow the audience to follow the narrator's thoughts. - pixabay