Universitatea Babeș - Bolyai, Facultatea de Litere, Cluj – Napoca 2011

The role of the narrator

Cuibuș Amalia Dania

Română – Engleză

Anul II

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In my essay I will treat the role of the narrator in David Herbert Lawrence`s short story
Odour of Chrysanthemums and in Henry James’s novella The Turn of the Screw. My essay
will be divided in four chapters, the first one containing general notes over the role of the
narrator and a description of several points of view. The second chapter will summarize David
Herbert Lawrence`s short story and in this chapter I will also give a short analysis of themes
and motifs and state the role of the narrator in this particular text. The third chapter will also
contain an analysis, but this time of Henry James novella and a description of the type of
narrator of this text. The last chapter, the concluding one, is dedicated to a conclusive point
where I will analyse in parallel the narrator`s role in both stories.

1. The narrator, general notes

The Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary gives the following definition of the narrator,
he is “the character who tells you what is happening in a book or film”1 and according to this
definition the narrator is simply the one relates a series of events, the one who talks to the
reader through a book or from a movie. Elspeth Jajdelska in Silent Reading and the Birth of
the Narrator says that “The term 'narrator' can be used in both a broad and a narrow sense.
The broad sense is <<one who tells a story>> whether that person is real or imagined; this is
the sense given in most dictionary definitions. Literary scholars, however, by 'narrator' often
mean a purely imaginative person, a voice emerging from a text to tell a story” 2. The act of
narration is much more complex and demanding than the role of the narrator, the simple role
of relating events because a narrator may chose different styles in which he can relate the
event and choosing the right style is essential for conveying the message and the general
emotion of the text. The role of narration is to present human characters through description
and dialogue, but the chief emphasis in upon the action.
1
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/narrator
2
Elspeth Jajdelska, Silent Reading and the Birth of the Narrator. Univ. of Toronto Press, 2007

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Regarding the point of view, there are four types of narrations and the first one is first person
participant, where the narrator is a participant in the experience he is relating and tells the
story in the first person, he tells the story of his life, or part o his life and he is the major
character, as in most autobiographies. The second type is the first person observer in which
the narrator is not telling his own story, he is present but he is interested in something else, the
story being told in the first person, however. The third type is the third person, and this type
contains two points of view, the first one is called third person omniscient which is used by an
author who is observing the story from a distance. He sees and knows all and his range of
understanding is broad since he can enter the thoughts and feelings of all his characters. The
second kind is the third person limited where the author gives his attention to one person and
concentrates on the attitude, the action, the thinking of only one main character. The last style
is the objective view, in which a narrator may choose to present his material in a strictly
objective manner, everything is shown and nothing is told.

2. Odour of Chrysanthemums

David Herbert Lawrence`s short story has as main theme the battle between nature and
industrialisation, a concept interwoven with a housewife`s struggle with her husband. Several
motifs can be spotted in this text, the imminence of death, the mine, the family filled with
problems and the most important one, the chrysanthemum, a flower that forebodes great
challenges “It was chrysanthemums when I married him, and chrysanthemums when you
were born, and the first time they ever brought him home drunk, he’d got brown
chrysanthemums in his button-hole”3. Ultimately, from the beginning of the essay, the
narrator presents to the reader the image of the chrysanthemum as a sign of great pain, of a
tragedy that will change the small family.

The narrator in this story is that of the third person omniscient limited, he knows what will
happen and how things will change or what the characters are thinking, but he only focuses on

3
http://www.daily-pulp.com/literature/odour-of-chrysanthemums/

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the main character, on the wife. In this particular text, the narrator`s role is to induce to the
reader the idea of symbols, of predestined events and he uses for this the flower. With the help
of this flower the reader can guess even from the beginning that a great tragedy has befallen
on this family. The narrator has hidden under the death of the husband another sense, the fight
of industrialism over nature, and also, in my opinion, the fight of religion and morality. As
industrialism sets in, and more and more people apply to the technology to solve their
problems they forget about their soul. The narrator tells us that after the death of her husband,
Elizabeth, the wife, feels that her marriage was fake, that she never knew him, he was a
“stranger” and only after his death she understood him completely. The marriage, that once
was a sacred ritual, now is only an action completed because that is the normal way of things,
and even the relationship between couples has changed, the narrator says about her ”how
awful she knew it now to have been a wife ” and about him „how awful he must have felt it to
be a husband”4.

The main role of the narrator, in this text is to tell the story of Elizabeth, a sad story, a story in
which she realises that death is” her ultimate master”. The narrator, using several stylistic
devices, gives to the story a sense of despair in which the reader always expects the worst to
happen.

3. The Turn of the Screw

This novella, written by Henry James, can be divided in two parts, the first one is set in an old
house, near Christmas Eve, when several men tell ghost stories. It all starts when one man
tells a story of a young boy haunted by a ghost, and the presence of a child, an innocent
human being gives the idea of ghost “another turn of the screw”. One guest says that he know
a story where two children are haunted, but they will have to wait for a manuscript for him to
read to them the whole story. In this first part the narrator presents the story from a first
person observer, it is implied that the author is one of the guests and he assists to the ghost

4
http://www.daily-pulp.com/literature/odour-of-chrysanthemums/

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stories. This technique gives credibility to the story, practically the reader is made believe that
the author himself assisted to the story, and with this technique the second part is introduced.

The second part represents the story of a governess, hired by a handsome bachelor to take care
of his two nephews at Bly. In this second story the point of view of the narrator shifts to the
first person participant, the governess tells the reader her story. When she arrives at the house
she meets Flora, a sweet little girl and Miles and the governess loves both of them
instantaneously, she sees herself as being at the helm of a ship lost at sea, her role being to
protect them, she says “I had the fancy of our being almost as lost as a handful of passengers
in a great drifting ship. Well, I was, strangely, at the helm”5. Later she discovers the existence
if two ghosts, Peter Quint and Miss Jessel and she believes that they want to harm the
children, to corrupt them. The climax of the story is when the governess points out to Flora
and Mrs. Grose the ghost and none of them see it, meaning that the governess is hallucinating.
Flora gets ill and she is sent with Mrs. Grose to her uncle and, on that night, the governess
confronts the ghost of Peter Quint and Miles dies in her arms.

Because the facts are related in the first person and the reader only knows the story from the
governess`s point of view we can never say with certainty whether the ghosts are real or not
and “Reading The Turn of the Screw from the point-of-view of the governess, the reader has a
limited knowledge and perception of the events occurring at Bly and must trust - perhaps to
his or her peril - the judgment of the governess”6. Most of the readers see this story as
fictional and believe in the existence of the ghost but a more complex interpretation would
involve the analysis of the governess`s subconscious. She sees is the ghost the materialisation
of sexual desires, her own desires to marry the children`s uncle.

The role of the narrator in this text is to present the story of the governess, but from her point
of view. The author`s intention was to create an obscure text filled with themes: the
corruption of the innocent, forbidden subjects, the destructiveness of heroism, motifs: vision,
a ship lost at sea, silence and symbols: light or the written word. His text still remains filled
with mysterious facts and it represents a great interest for the reader.

4. The narrator in both works

5
http://www.online-literature.com/henry_james/turn_screw/
6
http://www.gradesaver.com/turn-of-the-screw/study-guide/about/

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As I sated at the beginning of my essay, the narrator`s role is to resent a story, but he can
chose tell the action from different point of views. David Herbert Lawrence chose third
person omniscient limited to imply that the narrator knows all about the event, but he is only
interested in the destiny and thoughts of one main character, while Henry James chose first
person participant to create a mysterious story in which the absolute truth can never be found.

Bibliography:

1. David Herbert Lawrence – Odour of Chrysanthemums

2. Henry James – The Turn of the Screw

3. The Cambridge Dictionary