How Does Jane Austen's Use Of The Narrator

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Mansfield Park is one of Jane Austen 's only novels that actually gives us full insight into what every single character is thinking during the entire novel, which is very unlikely to happen in any of her novels. This means that while writing Mansfield Park, she was writing in "Third Person Omniscient" narration, meaning the narrator is "all knowing" and gives us the thoughts of every single character we come across, instead of just focusing on the main character. Mansfield Park was the first novel that Austen had used this third person omniscient narration, rather than making the reader think and come up with their own feelings and how the character is handling a situation, the narrator directly tells the reader exactly what they …show more content…

Though it is also confusing because of Fanny 's narration that occurs during the novel, and sometimes the narrator just throws information in instead of reading about how a situation occurred and what was said by the characters. For instance, during the last chapter when we are told of Maria and Henry 's hopeful marriage, it seems like an important scene but we are just given a summary of what actually happened. The narrator states, "She hoped to marry him, and they continued together till she was obliged to be convinced that such hope was vain, and till the disappointment and wretchedness arising from the conviction rendered her temper so bad, and her feelings for him so like hatred, as to make them for a while each other 's punishment, and then induce a voluntary separation." (48.10) The descriptive words that are being used are keys to understanding how the character is feeling about the situation considering we are only told a very quick description of an important scene, words such as "wretchedness", "disappointment" and "hatred" are such strong descriptive key words giving us insight into the characters current state of emotion. Another part of the novel that the narrator makes sure is always fully detailed is the landscapes, and she/he does this by using very long sentences describing the characters surroundings. For example, when the narrator describes a specific day in Portsmouth, he/she describes it as "...everything looked so beautiful under the influence of such a sky, the effects of the shadows pursuing each other, on the ships at spithead and the island beyond... dancing in its glee and dashing against the ramparts with so fine a sound, produced altogether such a combination of charms for Fanny..." (42.6) The narrator describes a scenery and the directs the ending of it straight

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