It was difficult to say. He looked through her as if he didn’t know her,
but his unawareness seemed rather studied, which made her uneasy
and suspicious. It was to be several months before Sophie was to
remember where she had seen him.In Barbara Vine’s popular novel The Chimney Sweeper’s Boy (1998), each
character and the reader are continuously at different stages of awareness
about the full story: the revelation of unintended incest between two
brothers. At the end there are only two characters, the author and the
reader, who are in full possession of this story; all the other characters are
in a state of partial awareness. This withholding, and gradual leaking, of
information (not only with respect to the reader but also other characters
in the novel) is most graphic in detective novels or other very plot-
orientated fictions.
The absent narrator
Finally (see Exercise 5), you may want to introduce ‘non-narrated’ ele-
ments as part of your narrative: these could be entries from diaries, letters,
newspaper entries or advertisements. In Sophie’s story such a non-
narrated element might be the boardroom minutes or a newspaper leak
about her impending ‘resignation’. Non-narrated elements can be useful in
breaking up and creating variety in the narration. They can give different
perspectives on an event, and can problematise the notion of an objective
reality. So-called ‘factual’ evidence is never completely objective, and
always has underlying ideological investments which may not be fully
disclosed. For instance, a newspaper report always includes the journal-
ist’s bias.
In order to create non-narrated elements, you might find it helpful to
refer back to the section on non-literary forms in Chapter 3.
FOCALISATION
Narration affects point of view, which is sometimes known in modern
narrative theory as focalisation or orientation. A point of view is a partic-
ular perspective taken by a narrator or character on an event or situation.
When Sophie was narrator she described the situation from her own point
of view because she gave her own perspective on what was happening.
However, narration is not identical to point of view: one narrator may
relay the points of view of several contrasting characters. So the next ques-
tion is, how does narration relate to focalisation? There are two obvious
Narrative, narratology, power 95