Narrative Style in The Dolls House What is

Narrative Style in The Doll’s House

What is a narrator? • The narrator is the person telling the story. • They could be involved in the story as a character (first person) • Or they could be an outsider watching the events who is never identified as an actual person (third person)

Who or what is the narrator in The Doll’s House? • Look through the text. What narrative perspective does it use? • Hint – if the narrator refers to themselves as ‘I’, ‘myself’, ‘me’ and so on, it is first person. If not, it is third person.

It is third person… • Third person doesn’t always mean the narrator is objective. Sometimes they report events as they happen with no information about characters’ feelings. • Other times they can convey the feelings of some or all characters, for example, “Stacey felt sad and betrayed. ” This style of narration is called Eye of God, because the narrator knows what the characters think and feel.

BUT… • Mansfield’s style of narration is different in that it conveys the thoughts and feelings of the characters in the story, but it doesn’t do it using the narrator’s voice. • The feelings and thoughts of the characters in The Dolls House are conveyed as if the characters themselves are speaking – in their own words.

Free Indirect Speech (Sometimes called Free Indirect Discourse) • This is a style of third-person narration which uses some of the characteristics of thirdperson (the ‘telling’ of the story) along with the essence of first-person direct speech (the words the character would use to talk)

• It is a manner of presenting the thoughts or feelings of a fictional character as if from that character’s point of view by combining grammatical and other features of the character’s ‘direct speech’ with features of the narrator’s ‘indirect report’ • What distinguishes free indirect speech from normal speech is the lack of an introductory expression such as "He said" or "he thought".

• Quoted or direct speech: He laid down his bundle and thought of his misfortune. "And just what pleasure have I found, since I came into this world? " he asked. • Normal indirect speech: He laid down his bundle and thought of his misfortune. He asked himself what pleasure he had found since he came into the world. • Free indirect speech: He laid down his bundle and thought of his misfortune. And just what pleasure had he found, since he came into this world?

That is the way for a house to open! Why don’t all houses open like that? • Basically what this means is that the narrator telling the story presents the thoughts and feelings of the characters, by using their own style of speaking in the narration. • An example of this is “But perfect, perfect little house. Who could possibly mind the smell? It was part of the joy…”

• We can tell when this is happening, because the narrator is not supposed to offer judgements or opinions, but just to report the events. • Lines like “perfect house” and “this was awful enough” are judgements which tell us that they are thoughts/opinions of someone.

Your task: • Find three more examples from the text, other than the ones already used, that are judgements written by the narrator (not being spoken by the characters) • Whose thoughts or opinions do they represent? • Whose thoughts or opinions are predominantly represented in the text?

Now consider… • How does this use of Free Indirect Speech help us, the reader, to understand the main ideas or messages in the story? Write a paragraph explaining this.