Of Clerical Life and Adam Bede the narrator is clearly indicated to be male. 53įact which suggests that Eliot desired to separate herself from the narrator is that in Scenes Of her novels rather than to identify the narrator with Eliot as author. If this is a correct interpretation, then it is important to study the role the narrator plays in the structure Seems clear that she intended the narrator's comments and ‘intrusions’ to be part of the overall artistic structure Significantly she refers to herself as an artist and not merely as a novelist. ( Letters, V, 458–9, emphasis in original) Or in dialogue which is not part of the structure of my books, I have sinnedĪgainst my own laws. I have alwaysĮxercised a severe watch against anything that could be called preaching, and if I have ever allowed myself in dissertation Moved towards the ends I seek by my works as wholes than by an assemblage of extracts, my writings are a mistake. If it were true I should be quite stultified as an artist. Her work, which includes many passages in which the narrator addresses the reader, might make it appear that her novels were It expresses her fear that Alexander Main's book of extracts from One of the most important critical statements Eliot ever made and one which deservesįrequent quotation is to be found in a letter she wrote to John Blackwood. Novels and that a fuller understanding of her fiction depends on this being taken into account. I shall argue, however, that the narrator should be seen as an integral part of the structure of her The identification of the narrator with the author since only the author could possess ‘omniscient’ knowledge

The use of the term ‘omniscient narrator’ has encouraged Moralism or of a reluctance to let the novel speak for itself. These ‘intrusions’ are seen as signs of an excessive In her own person and so interferes with the reader's response. To the narrator has encouraged the view, still common among many readers, that ‘George Eliot’ intrudes too often In her own person in Middlemarch more than in any previous novel.’ This attitude For example, Michael Mason writes, ‘George Eliot intervenes As early as 1872 Edwardĭowden suggested that the narrator should be seen as the author's ‘second self’, but in practiceĬritics have been content to regard the narrator as George Eliot. Eliot's novels have tended to identify the narrator with the author herself.

Author middlemarch