Nature of Narrative by Scholes Robert; Phelan James; Kellogg Robert & James Phelan & Robert Kellogg

Author:Scholes, Robert; Phelan, James; Kellogg, Robert & James Phelan & Robert Kellogg
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 2006-04-18T04:00:00+00:00

Flaubert would no doubt throw up his hands (or perhaps his dinner) at such a passage, at such an admission of defeat by the word-user, but it is clearly an outgrowth of that dissatisfaction with words as conveyors of feeling which Flaubert himself was one of the first narrative artists to formulate, and which is typical of much modern fiction. In Lawrence’s case his turn to symbolism in much of his better fiction is designed mainly to provide a vehicle for communication to the reader of the essence of characters who are themselves more or less inarticulate. In narrative analysis Lawrence often seems to take sides for and against his characters so violently that he runs the risk of driving the reader to react in precisely the opposite way to that in which the narration is supposed to move him. The symbol, for Lawrence, is often a more effective vehicle than analysis just because he cannot maintain that calm, narrative compassion which George Eliot relies on so heavily and effectively. Lawrence’s “The Ladybird,” “The Fox,” and “The Captain’s Doll” are all short novels built around the symbols named in their titles, which are symbols of character in every case — designed to perform some of the work of characterization which would otherwise require more in the way of narrative analysis or interior monologue. And these three novellas are certainly among Lawrence’s most successful narrative performances.

The great modern practitioners of stream of consciousness characterization have, of course, faced the problem posed by Flaubert and Lawrence of the limitation of verbal patterns as conveyors of thought and characterization through thought. They solve the problem in a number of ways. If the character is intelligent and sensitive enough, then he can be allowed to articulate his own mental processes. Stephen Dedalus or Quentin Compson can be as articulate and sensitive as Joyce and Faulkner care to make them, without offending anyone’s sense of probability. If, on the other hand, the character is subnormal, other possibilities emerge. Septimus Smith and Benjy Compson are in this category. Some psychologist has proved that Benjy is not a true psychotic but a literary construct. This being so, it is fortunate that Benjy is in a book, where he belongs. Actually Faulkner and Virginia Woolf are using the supposed mental limitations of these two characters as a means of getting away from routine rhetoric and introducing a more poetical verbal pattern into the monologue. What results is a kind of super stream of consciousness in which the character’s limited mind accounts for an excessive distortion of normal thought patterns, which communicates all the more effectively on a level well above anything the character himself may be supposed capable of achieving. This is a powerful device in the hands of a master, as Benjy’s monologue indicates. It is also the beginning of a retreat from a purely mimetic concept of characterization. The step from The Sound and the Fury to As I Lay Dying is only a short one;

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