Writing Great Fiction

of this kind of narrative dexterity is found in chapter 11 of George

Eliot’s 0LGGOHPDUFK.

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fashion, about a doctor named Lydgate, who is new to the town

of Middlemarch, and his interest in marrying a pretty young

woman named Rosamond Vincy. Eliot bluntly states that

Lydgate is “young, poor, and ambitious” and that the chief

quality he wants in a wife is beauty and charm. Eliot also lets

us know that Rosamond is interested in Lydgate, too, because

she considers herself too good for the boring young men she

grew up with.

o Along the way in this passage of pure exposition, Eliot

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hierarchy of the town, while also discussing the fact that love

and marriage can disarrange that social hierarchy. It is, in other

words, as godlike a perspective as possible, mostly cool, even-

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o Then, Eliot narrows her focus to the breakfast table of the

Vincy household, where Rosamond, her brother Fred, and their

mother discuss a wide variety of topics. Here, Eliot vividly

evokes the individual characters and their relationships, while

taking care of an important moment in the plot and giving the

reader information that will be important later on. And it’s all

done in a third-person point of view that is halfway between a

recording eye and a judgmental authorial voice.

z It’s important to note that an omniscient third-person narration can also
incorporate the close third person. In $QQD.DUHQLQD, Tolstoy writes
much of the novel in the same omniscient third person that Eliot uses,
keeping us at a slight remove from the characters. But he also delves
into a modern-seeming close third person, especially with Anna herself.