The Literature Book

182

IT IS A NARROW MIND

WHICH CANNOT LOOK

AT A SUBJECT FROM

VARIOUS POINTS OF VIEW

MIDDLEMARCH (1871–1872), GEORGE ELIOT

T

he omniscient (all knowing)

narrator writes from a

perspective outside the

story but knows everything about

the characters and events in the

story. This authorial voice was

widely used by 19th-century

novelists in the context of social

realism. Many of the best-known

writers of the period—Charles

Dickens, Victor Hugo, and Leo

Tolstoy, for example—often wrote

in the third-person omniscient, and

the narrative device was ideal for

George Eliot in Middlemarch, as it

helped her draw her readers into

“watching keenly the stealthy

convergence of human lots.”

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

The omniscient narrator

BEFORE

1749 Henry Fielding’s

omniscient narrator in Tom

Jones exposes the process

of constructing a narrative.

1862 The omniscient voice in

Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables

comments on politics, society,

and the characters in the text.

1869 War and Peace by

Leo Tolstoy includes an

omniscient voice to enable

“philosophical discussion.”

AFTER

1925 The omniscient narrator

in Mrs. Dalloway lets Virginia

Woolf create characters with

great “inner space” and depth.

2001 Third-person omniscient

narration by Jonathan Franzen,

in The Corrections, suggests

that cultural commentary and

authority is a revived function

of literary fiction.

The narrator’s point of view

The narrator can be...

...with no access

to the characters’

thoughts and

emotions

(objective).

...with access to

the thoughts and

emotions of one

or two characters

(limited).

...with full access

to the characters’

interior lives

(omniscient).

...“you” the reader

(second person).

...a character within the story

(first person).

...outside of the story

(third person)...

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