Narration and the First Novel For Grown-ups

The narrator seems to be point of contention for many of us, so I’d like to throw my two cents in. First, I’d like to disagree with Amy’s use of the term meta-fiction. My reasoning will be laid out with the rest of my argument, but I think it’s important to be clear on this point from the beginning. In order for Middlemarch to truly be meta-fiction, our narrator would have to consciously draw attention to her own devices as elements of fiction. In other words, she would have to be self-conscious not only of her position as narrator, but she would also need to comment on and call attention to the fact that the characters in her story are works of fiction. I argue that Middlemarch can be read as a meta-narrative for the Victorian period which is what truly makes it the “first novel for grown-ups.”

I will define meta-narrative shortly, but first I would like to clarify the type of narration that we are dealing with in Middlemarch. Wayne C. Booth offers us our best contemporary description of types of narration. He writes, “If we name over three or four of the great narrators—say Cervantes’ Cid Hamete Benengeli, Tristram Shandy, the ‘I’ of Middlemarch, and Strether, [. . .] we realize that to describe any of them with terms like ‘first person’ and ‘omniscient’ tells us little about how they differ from each other, or why they succeed while others described in the same terms fail” (149-50). Thus, “The Voice of the Wise Woman” needs to be defined more precisely. Paraphrasing Booth, there is, at the most basic level, a distinction between dramatized and undramatized narrators. There is also always a sense of implied authorship. Undramatized narrators can be first or third person; however, the stories they tell seem to come to us completely unmediated. There is no distinction between the implied, undramatized narrator and the implied author. Middlemarch is seemingly part of this category. but we can only know for sure if we know the requirements for a dramatized narrator. Such a narrator comes into existence, generally, as soon as he or she acknowledges himself with “I.” We must then decide to what degree the narrator aligns himself or herself with the implied author or distinguishes himself or herself as a character separate from the implied author, participating in the action of the story, with its own thoughts and feelings. Generally speaking, these narrators are characters; they are “never explicitly labeled as narrators at all” (Booth 152). However, sometimes these narrators are disguised as undramatized narrators. Booth writes that though narrators “of this kind are seldom labeled so explicitly as God in Job, they often speak with an authority as sure as God’s” (152). Therefore, I propose that the narrator in Middlemarch is a dramatized, first person narrator, who is aligned directly with the implied author. Now that we have many of these distinctions laid out, it should be clear how Middlemarch is not exactly meta-fiction. A good example of a meta-fictive narrator would be Tristram Shandy. Sterne’s narrator is a dramatized, first person narrator who draws attention to himself as narrator. The “I” in Middlemarch never points to the fact that she is telling a story. Her commentary is restricted to the character’s feelings and motives, and never touches on the process of story telling.

This is important because the narrator in Middlemarch is then not a narrator-agent, such as Shandy, Huckleberry Finn or Montressor in Poe’s “Cask of Amontillado,” through which the reliability of the narration is easily called into question. We can clearly see that her narration is not delivered to us unmediated—she gives us commentary. Of course, a question of reliability was raised in class regarding her commentary. Booth argues, however, that “To treat [commentary] as a single device is to ignore important differences between commentary that is merely ornamental, commentary that serves a rhetorical purpose but is not part of the dramatic structure, and commentary that is integral to the dramatic structure” (155). The commentary here only serves rhetorical purposes, and in some cases is perhaps purely ornamental, but it is never part of the dramatic structure because the narrator never interacts with any of the characters. The Voice of the Wise Woman speaks with the authority of God. The question of reliability also contains within it a question of distance. The examples I mentioned earlier, Shandy, Huck Finn, and Montressor, are all distant, as Booth points out, from their implied author intellectually, morally, temporally, etc. Furthermore, these narrators are not omniscient. The Wise Woman has full privilege into the minds of all the characters and has no visible distance from the implied author. How does this affect her reliability? Booth writes that “Generally speaking, the deeper our plunge [into a character’s mind] the more unreliability we will accept without loss of sympathy” (164). Based on all of these factors, we can safely accept the narrator’s commentary as reliable. This of course does not mean that we must accept it as reliable—it is merely a guide.

It is this notion of guide on which I base my assertion that Middlemarch can be read as a meta-narrative. The best example to illustrate the characteristics and purposes of meta-narrative is perhaps the Bible. This text attempts to establish an authoritative foundation on which to base one’s life. The parables, allegories, and historical accounts endeavor to institute a universal, totalizing order which explains all knowledge and experience. Middlemarch, essentially, attempts the same self-legitimization. Booth even compares Middlemarch’s narrator type, as we’ve defined it, to God in the book of Job. There are some distinct differences—the Bible is considered the Word of God; therefore, God is the narrator, but He is also a character, referred to in the third person. However, the narrator’s psychological commentary matches that of the Voice of the Wise Woman. The narrator of Job tells the reader that Job “was blameless, upright, fearing God, and turning away from evil” (NASB Job 1:1). There are countless examples of this type of commentary in Middlemarch, but I only need provide one to demonstrate the correlation. The following commentary refers to Casaubon: “[H]e was as genuine a character as any ruminant animal, and he had not actively assisted in creating any illusions about himself” (Eliot 186). There are also moments of commentary where The Wise Woman confronts the reader directly, asking him to examine his own experience and thus come to the same conclusion that she has regarding a universal truth. The Wise Woman’s purpose in presenting these types of commentary could be read as an attempt to establish a meta-narrative for Victorian society. The question of reliability only becomes relevant if the reader chooses to believe in the meta-narrative or not—just as members of Christianity believe the narration in the Bible is reliable while atheists do not.

Finally, I will address Virginia Wolff’s statement regarding the status of Middlemarch as the first novel for grown-ups. First, if we view Middlemarch as a meta-narrative, then we certainly must decide that it is a novel for grown-ups. Yes, the Bible has many stories that are taught to children, but they are certainly not written for children. Children may be able to grasp the concept of meta-narrative on the level of allegory or morality tale. However, the complexity of the commentary and its implications put both of these meta-narratives out of reach. These are not the only examples. Marxism, Enlightenment science, and Freudian theory all seek to construct a meta-narrative to systematically provide a totalizing explanation for all knowledge and experience. Children certainly would not be able to grasp any of these. Whether or not this is the first novel for grown-ups would be difficult to say. However, it is the first that I can think of that can be defined as a meta-narrative and that treats its subjects in a completely adult manner.

Works Cited

Booth, Wayne C. The Rhetoric of Fiction. Chicago: U of Chicago Press, 1961.

Eliot, George. Middlemarch. 1871. New York: Barnes & Noble Classics, 2003.

New American Standard Bible. Ed. The Lockman Foundation. Grand Rapids: The Zondervan Corporation, 2002.