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namely the word and. Even if it is true that speech and thought have very similar
textual representations, they do remain mutually exclusive categories, both
ontologically and in their fictional existence. Nothing, strictly speaking, is ever a
representation of speech and thought. Thought, as opposed to speech, is nondiscursive, private, non-communicative, non-pragmatic and semi-verbal, to list just a
few differential properties. The abbreviation "RST" (which Banfield 1982 avoids)
hides this difference and may even be the cause of a category error. "RST" ought
therefore to be used with caution: it is an acceptable generalization emphasizing the
syntactic similarities between two representational techniques; [End of p.
350]however, in a discussion of specific cases the terms represented speech or
represented thought, dependent on the circumstances, are certainly preferable.
In addition to the types exemplified in (1), Banfield also presents a borderline case
with an introductory inquit phrase and an intonation break, (2a), noting "a superficial
resemblance [. . .] between sentences of represented speech and thought and those of
indirect speech" (1982: 71). Other cases such as (2b) and (2c) she classifies as
ungrammatical:
(2)
a. He said: oh was he tired.
b. *He said oh was he tired.
c. *He said that oh was he tired.
(2b) and (2c) Banfield cites as *He said (that) oh was he tired (1982: 71), implying
that there is no significant difference in ungrammaticalness between the two options.
However, McHale (1983) and Toolan (1988) argue that according to their, and
probably most other native speakers' intuition, (2b) is not seriously ungrammatical
and at any rate certainly possible in narrative contexts. On this view many of
Banfield's arguments from grammaticalness or ungrammaticalness become suspect.
Here is a selection of problematical cases as quoted from Banfield by McHale (1983:
24-25):
(3)
a. *The consul asked himself why then should he be sitting in the bathroom. (Banfield
1982: 29)
b. *He [. . .] thought to himself he was damn lucky to get away from [. . .] that
sonofabitchin' foreman. (Banfield 1982: 114)
c. *No, sir, he could not obey his order, he told the officer. (Banfield 1982: 114)
These sentences are all assumed to be ungrammatical by Banfield because the indirect
speech samples (3a)-(3b) contain direct speech constructions such as inverted
questions or indications of pronunciation and the RST sample (3c) makes use of an
addressee-oriented deictic (sir). McHale, an expert on Dos Passos, points out that
these sentence types are in fact Dos Passos's "staple sentence[s]" (1983: 31). He also
shrewdly argues that none of Dos Passos's critics and reviewers "ever mentioned his
ungrammaticalness" (1983: 31). Also discussing Banfield's examples, Toolan (1988)
helpfully suggests that sentences like (3a) and (3b) might be termed "creative indirect
speech" (1988: 143).
The most salient differential feature of RST is its shiftedness, i.e., a (usually)
backshifted tense and shifted pronouns as in (4). It is also useful to distinguish
whether RST occurs in a third person or a first person context, for which the
abbreviations RST3 and RST1, respectively, might be suggested.[End of p. 351]
(4)
a. She was not interested in his memoirs.
b. He had once been a farmer, if I could believe it.
Assuming that (4a) is RST3 and (4b) RST1, the shiftedness of RST can be illustrated
by reconstructing an original or "preshifted" utterance or thought, a procedure which
Cohn (1978: 100) calls the "litmus test" of RST. As a simple notational convention I
shall suggest the following in (5), which explicate the RST cases in (4):
(5)
a. ~I am not interested in your memoirs.
b. ~I was once a farmer, if you can believe it.
In this notation, the "approximately equal" symbol indicates the explicator's
approximate reconstruction of a preshifted "direct" utterance or thought. It must be
stressed at once that this notation is a purely explicatory device; in particular, it can
neither be claimed that the assumed original is exactly determinable nor, in fact, that
such an original even exists. This complication is illustrated in (6) and (7):
(6)
a. He was a writer of her caliber, Smith said. (Banfield 1982: 26)
b. ~He is a writer of her caliber.
c. ~You are a writer of Dorothy's caliber.
d. ~I am a writer of your caliber.
(7)
[a] Probably his good works would take the form of building pagodas. [b] Four
pagodas, five, six, seven - the priests would tell him how many - with carved
stonework, gilt umbrellas and little bells that tinkled in the wind, every tinkle a prayer.
[. . .]
[c] All these thoughts flowed through U Po Kyin's mind swiftly and for the most part
in pictures. (Orwell, Burmese Days, 7)
(6b)-(6d) and many others could serve as possible preshifted originals for (6a). As
Banfield has shown, this fact makes it impossible to assume any kind of derivational
relation between the preshifted "bases" and their RST realizations. In (7) the reader is
explicitly advised that "all these thoughts" go through the reflector's head "for the
most part in pictures". Note that we can still test and, up to a point, explain the RST
character of (7a) and (7b) by construing preshifted fragments such as ~Probably my
good works will take . . . the priests will tell me how many . . .; yet at the same time
we must also take into account the text's reference, in (7c), to the semi-verbal quality
of U Po Kyin's thoughts. Incidentally, the instructional character of (7c) clearly
indicates that there is a narrator at work here, a circumstance that was emphatically
denied by Banfield for RST3 and for third person texts in general.[End of p. 352]
He will write to her every alternate day, and tell her all his adventures. [~I will write
to you . . .] (Dickens, Edwin Drood, 174)
(12)
Have I heard, she wants to know, from poor Blanche?
[~Have you heard from poor Blanche?] (Delafield, Diary of a Provincial Lady, 431)
Although Banfield claims that in RST "no non-generic present tense appears" (1982:
100), both examples, (11) is RST3 and (12) is RST1, comfortably use the present
tense as a narrative tense - not just as an occasional generic, or even historical,
present. (Note, incidentally, that the existence of present tense RST is a good reason
for calling RST a "shifted" rather than a "backshifted" form.)
Although it is certainly true that RST is primarily a literary phenomenon, Banfield
may have overemphasized its literariness. Yamaguchi (1989: 586) points out that there
are known cases of RST in oral story-telling, and McHale quotes several sources
discussing non-literary RST, but adds that RST is always felt to introduce a "fictional"
element (1978: 282f.). The following example, (13), contains a case of represented
speech in what is perhaps a more obvious non-literary context, namely the minutes of
a military staff conference:
(13)
[a] The Chairman said that the A.O.C. [Air Officer Commanding] regarded the
question of heating as of utmost importance. [b] In view of the small coal
ration, was it possible or desirable to convert to oil heating? [c] What was
happening on the Station side? (Public Record Office, AIR 28/296, 2)
(13) begins in indirect speech, which introduces a new topic on the agenda. The
secretary then switches to represented speech in sentences (13b) and (13c), perhaps
for reasons of variation, but obviously also in order to keep close to the wording and
expressivity of an inquiry by a high-ranking officer. Clearly represented speech is
used here, in an everyday context, in an entirely natural and effective manner.
The feature just noted, that RST retains almost all of the expressivity of [End of p.
354] direct speech, leads Banfield to argue that the subjective expressions (evaluative
adjectives, contrastive stress, kinship terms, exclamations, questions etc.) are pointers
to a source consciousness, a "Self". This Self Banfield equates with the concept of
"point of view" as used in literary discussions of narrative texts (1982: 68). One of
Banfield's main principles is that within the scope of a single sentence - which she
calls EXPRESSION - at most one Self can be expressed. It is this principle ("1
E[XPRESSION]/1 SELF") that runs counter to the so-called "dual voice" approach to
RST/FID which is practised by many literary theorists. For "dual voicers" (as Toolan
1988: 136 calls them), FID is the prototypical case where both the voice of a character
and that of the narrator may be heard. Opinions on this matter vary considerably,
however, and inconsistencies are not rare. Thus Toolan at one point states that he
sympathizes "with Banfield's underlying assumption that an utterance cannot emerge
from two distinct subjectivities at once" (1990: 78); yet he also claims that RST
exhibits "many marks of the narratorial voice and presence" (1988: 128). Ehrlich
(1990), on the other hand, strictly follows Banfield in assuming that an RST sentence
can only have one Self or POV. This she does even for a sentence such as (14), which
she classifies as "semantically anomalous":
(14)
Yes, she disliked that sweet man immensely, Lily said. (Ehrlich 1990: 69)
In spite of the "contradictory information" contained in (14), Ehrlich (1990: 69-70)
assigns both disliked and sweet to one Self, the character identified in the
parenthetical. However, since RST in many respects remains close to its preshifted
original it probably also retains the original's intonational quality; and there appear to
be sharply divergent intonations for ~I dislike that sweet man immensely. In particular,
in addition to representing an inconsistent, perhaps pathological, utterance, (14) can
also be read (and intonated) as containing an ironical judgment. In this latter reading,
in which sweet is the ironic echo of another character's subjective expression, "1
E[XPRESSION]/1 SELF" is violated, a fact blandly dismissed by Banfield by stating,
"With irony, we have passed beyond the jurisdiction of grammar" (1982: 221). The
same problem lies at the heart of the clash between Banfield's claim in (15) and
McHale's invented counterexample (16):
(15)
In "Yes, she could hear his poor child crying now," the yes cannot be the expression of
"her" point of view and poor of his. (Banfield 1982: 94)
(16)
She was about fed up with both of them, father and daughter. Above all, she was sick
and tired of hearing him moan about his poor child. His poor child this, his poor child
that: enough already! Yes, she could hear his poor child crying now. (McHale 1983:
35-36)
[End of p. 355]
Contrary to Banfield's reasoning in (15), (16) creates a context that favors a dual voice
reading based on subjective expressions anchored on two Selves. But, as may be
expected from an ironical utterance, McHale's female character now only
metalinguistically mentions the key phrase poor child. Since such ironic echoing is
very often taken to be the prime example of dual voicedness, McHale's
counterexample, though valid, actually highlights the fact that Banfield's principle
remains quite strong on ordinary, non-mentioned linguistic evidence. Yamaguchi
(1989: 587), on the other hand, draws a different conclusion and proposes that all RST
be considered a mentioned form. This assumption may indeed help to explain the
narratorial irony that is often taken to be associated with RST; however, it clearly
serves no useful purpose for the apparently much more frequent case of ordinary, nonironic RST.
Sperber and Wilson, who were the first to analyze irony on the basis of the "usemention distinction", explicitly allow RST as a mentioning technique (1981: 305).
Since they do not quote an ironic RST example, I will provide the following:
(17)
"When do you leave?" she asked.
"Tomorrow night."
She said nothing more. Strangely enough, a tinge of melancholy had settled over her
spirits. No doubt the proximity of the town was the cause of this. (Orczy, The Scarlet
Pimpernel, 358)
~No doubt, the lady here thinks, the proximity of the town is the cause of my
melancholy; but reader and narrator know that this is just her counterfactual
rationalizing and that the real cause of her state of mind is that her husband is leaving
her. Note that RST is only incidental here, as this type of irony (dramatic irony) works
in exactly the same fashion with any other mentioning technique (e.g., direct speech
or direct thought). In addition, the irony in this case appears to establish itself without
having to rely on any dual-voiced elements.
Since the real RST/FID attraction for dual voicers lies in the mingling of a narrator's
and a character's voice, one had best look at passages where both an intrusive narrator
and a reflector may be encountered, as is sometimes the case in Thackeray or Dickens.
Consider the following, slightly modified example from Edwin Drood:
(18)
[a] He will soon , poor youth that he is, be far away, and may never see them again, he
thinks. [b] Poor youth! Poor youth! (Dickens, Edwin Drood, 177; italicized phrase
added)
Here the expressive poor youth is tied in one place (18a) to the character and [End of
p. 356] in another (18b) to the narrator. But, obviously, the self-pitying poor within
represented thought carries none of the awareness of tragic irony expressed in the
narrator's emotive exclamations. Again, despite extremely favorable conditions, no
dual voice reading is obvious or necessary.
Banfield is aware of the fact that, apart from irony, "1 E[XPRESSION]/1 SELF" also
runs into difficulties with two further special cases. One is the echo question, which is
discussed at length in Banfield (1982: 123) and commented on by Yamaguchi (1989:
587). The other is "heard speech", which, Banfield thinks, is exclusively a feature of
first person narration:
(19)
[a] Did I see it? [b] I saw it. [c] What more did I want? [d] What I wanted was rivets,
by heaven! (Banfield 1982: 122)
This is dialogic RST1 in which the interlocutor's represented speech - (19a) and (19c)
- contains subjective expressions (questions) aligned with his Self. Fettered by her
principle, Banfield is forced to assume that the sequence of turns in (19) represents
alternating POVs, despite the fact that the narrator's I - normally a salient POV
indicator - is explicitly present in each sentence. This is rightly challenged by
Yamaguchi (1989: 587) as an ad hoc solution. For heard speech, clearly some sort of
POV has to be assigned to the perceiving subject. Perception is a Self-oriented
activity; and what is heard is often different from what has been said. Indeed, a
number of cases which Banfield did not fully foresee can be adduced as further
evidence of this division and propagation of separate POVs:
(20)
He worked hard - seven hours a day; his subject was now the influence of something
upon somebody - they were walking on and Mrs. Ramsay did not quite catch the
meaning, only the words, here and there . . . dissertation . . . fellowship . . .
readership . . . lectureship. (Woolf, To The Lighthouse, 13)
(21)
but one question still remained, which the faces of the Jews pretty significantly
suggested, - was I that person? [~Is he that person?] (De Quincey, Confessions of an
English Opium-Eater, 25)
(22)
a. Oh how extraordinarily nice I was! (*she thought). (Yamaguchi 1989: 583;
ungrammaticalness assigned by Yamaguchi)
b. Oh how extraordinarily nice I[i] was! (*she[j] thought). (Banfield 1982: 94;
ungrammaticalness assigned by Banfield)
(20) represents part of Mr. Tansley's conversation with Mrs. Ramsay as heard speech
in a third person context. Mrs. Ramsay's consciousness leaves its mark of subjectivity
on the heard represented speech, and we get through to [End of p. 357] Mr. Tansley's
POV only via a representation of Mrs. Ramsay's flawed perception of it. (21) appears
to be quite close to the first person heard speech case in (19), except that this is not
represented speech, but represented thought; and here the speech-thought disparity
happens to be crucial. Of course, the experiencing I cannot read other minds; what he
does is guess at the Jews' thoughts on the evidence of their facial expressions. The
subjective expressions in this represented thought - the question construction and the
italicized emphasis - all denote the Jews' POV. But the context makes it quite clear
that this is a speculation of the I, who does not passively perceive something that has
been said within earshot, but actively constructs what he thinks goes on in his
interlocutors' minds. (22a) is a misquotation of one of Banfield's sentences, here
reproduced as (22b). Yamaguchi forgets to indicate the reference conditions that
Banfield meant to be the cause of the sentence's assumed ungrammaticalness. (22a),
as it stands, is a perfectly grammatical specimen of direct thought. Oddly enough,
Banfield's original (22b), in which the I refers to the speaker/narrator and the she to a
character, a combination thought to be inconceivable, is also not ungrammatical
because it can be read as a speculative reconstruction, by the first person narrator, of
the thought content of another mind, i.e., exactly along the lines of (21).
Banfield's rule that a sentence can materially express only one POV is largely
responsible for her practice of viewing narrative sentences in isolation. If two
neighboring sentences show subjective elements anchored on different Selves, then,
Banfield argues, they simply produce a sequence of different POVs; in fact, on her
view, a text may be a sequence of alternating POV representations. What her grammar
of expressive sentences precludes is that POV might be arranged hierarchically, i.e.,
that one POV might be presented from another POV (even if perhaps it is impossible
for both POVs to be explicitly present in the subjective expressions of a single
sentence). A case in point is (23), which looks deceptively simple:
(23)
He wanted to tell Arthur Winner that he knew; he knew; he hadn't meant to! All he did
was make everybody trouble - (Cozzens, By Love Possessed, 71)
Apparently (23) begins as indirect thought and then "ungrammatically" shades into
represented thought, exhibiting expressive constructions and an ellipsis indicative of
the POV of the third person, he. A contextualized reading of this passage shows that
this is in fact far off the mark. In By Love Possessed there is only one centre of
consciousness, namely the small-town lawyer here identified as Arthur Winner, and
thus what (23) actually represents is Arthur Winner's speculation about a business
partner's telephone call that did not reach him. His partner, he has reason to believe,
probably wanted to say, apologetically, ~I know; I know; I hadn't meant to . . . etc. In
other words, [End of p. 358] (23) shows a hypothetical POV reconstructed and
represented from Arthur Winner's controlling POV. Thus a sentence may be RST
indicating the POV of a character; or perhaps it may be remembered (speculation of
(alien thought)) or some such nested POV construct (for similar nested configurations
see Cohn 1978: 133). The expressive elements, if any, apparently attach to the
innermost POV; indeed, the innermost level is the one that will be represented in the
first place. (23) demonstrates how little point there is in analyzing such sentences in
isolation. Once context is considered, POV assignment is more than the answer to the
question Whose subjective expressions? - it is a consequence of textual interpretation
and reading strategy.
3. Ehrlich's discourse-analytical approach to RST and POV
Although crediting Banfield's "profound" influence (vii), Ehrlich prudently distances
herself from Banfield's total denial of any speaker presence whatsoever in third person
texts and particularly RST3. Strangely enough, Ehrlich does not acknowledge any of
the theorists involved in the debate over Banfield's book. Possibly Toolan (1988) and
Yamaguchi (1989) came too late to be considered; but that McHale's (1978) and
(1983) contributions should be missing is a serious oversight. At any rate, just as
Banfield's critics unanimously proposed, Ehrlich's approach now explicitly recognizes
the "limitations of a sentence based approach" (16), and she also, without further ado,
reinstates the narrator for third person texts.
For the Woolfian narrator, Ehrlich assumes the unobtrusive, withdrawn, minimal,
objective kind of the species, who has an occasionally audible voice and a POV of
his/her/its own, but may not use the first person (10). This latter (generally too rigid)
restriction was imposed on "impersonal" texts by Tamir (1976); the occurrence of the
first person, plural, arguably including a self-reference of the narrator, in To The
Lighthouse II.3, goes unnoticed by Ehrlich. Apart from Tamir, Ehrlich's literary
authority on POV is Genette (1980); the more recent discussion on POV, focalization
etc. (e.g. Chatman 1986) has not been incorporated. According to Ehrlich, in an RST
passage "the speaker (narrator) totally identifies with a character of the narrated
events" (118, n. 5), whereas narration proper consists of "sentences expressing the
POV of the narrator (i.e. where the narrator assumes a position equi-distant from all
characters)" (16). For an RST passage this seems to pave the way for a dual voice
interpretation in the sense of Pascal (1977) or Cohn (1978). But the question of
whether a passage is narration or RST, i.e., exhibits the POV of the narrator OR that
(27)
a. A few drops of rain were falling. (21)
b. She saw the moon. (22)
Examples (27a) and (27b), Ehrlich claims, are potential representations of perception
acts - which is true - and are for that reason potential RST (21 f.) - which does not at
all follow. Unless a character can be imagined to think or say ~A few drops of rain are
falling, or ~I see the moon - somewhat unlikely scenarios - Cohn's litmus test fails;
hence these examples are not RST. If represented perception were part of RST, RST
should be called something else.
To make matters worse, RST is further extended by Ehrlich to cover even direct
thought and indirect thought (cp. examples 2 and 6 on pp. 7 and 84, respectively).
This radical extension appears to be necessary in order to establish a general
"narration/RST distinction" (26, 52) in fiction. This distinction is attributed to
Banfield, but Banfield actually differentiated "represented perception" and RST, then
subsumed both under "represented consciousness", and only then arrived at the far
more acceptable global opposition "narration/represented consciousness". One of the
immediate effects of Ehrlich's now seriously overextended RST is that, cuckoo-like, it
has crowded out all its siblings. Of course, direct speech, direct thought, indirect
speech and indirect thought all appear even in Ehrlich's sample passages, RST-biased
as they are, yet she hardly ever has cause to mention them by name. But, it may be
asked, is it not exactly Woolf's conscious modulation, her orchestration of all of the
techniques, that produces the remarkable depth-effects and rhythmic quality of her
novels? Extended RST not only provides no answer; the question itself is pointless if
almost everything is RST. This surely is an extremely inauspicious starting point for
what, at least in part, professes to be an Analysis of Literary Style.
In its radically extended scope, RST serves to attribute episodes to a character's
consciousness ("Andrew's RST", "the RST of Mr. Tansley" and so on). For Ehrlich,
the next logical step is to read such RST episodes as expressing the POV of their
source consciousness (75). Phrases like "a sentence of RST, reflecting James's point of
view" (72) or "particular points of view (i.e. RST units)" (40) suggest that she, like
Banfield, assumes that there is an almost total conceptual overlap between RST and
character POV. Analyzing the coherence conditions holding in an episode, Ehrlich
also discusses transitions between characters' RSTs (POV switching), and between
RST and passages that are attributable to the narrator's POV (78). This discussion,
under such headings as referential linking, semantic connectors, alignment to the
narrative time axis, time deictics, the function of paragraph indentations, etc., turns up
a number of useful criteria that generally correctly predict readers' intuitive POV
assignments. Ehrlich's postulated reading [End of p. 361] strategy for marking off
episodes of RST and episodes of narratorial exposition (cp. p. 40 ff.) appears to
proceed roughly along the lines of (28):
(28)
a. If a sentence contains character oriented subjective expressions or is accompanied
by a parenthetical indicating a reflector, then consider this sentence to be the
beginning of an RST episode anchored on the reflector-character's POV.
b. If the following sentence is referentially, semantically and/or temporally linked to
the preceding sentence, or if it re-satisfies (a), then continue attributing this character's
POV to it.
c. If substrategies (a) and (b) fail, assume a narratorial POV equidistant from that of
all the characters currently present.
As an illustration of this strategy let us assume that on a rough, "first pass" reading of
a paragraph it is found to contain sentences of narration (n), sentences unambiguously
recognizable as character RST (c) and sentences that are ambiguous between n and c,
symbolized as "n-over-c". A hypothetical sequence of sentences may look like in (29):
(29)
n n
n
c
n n
c c
According to (28a), the fourth element, the single c, would be identified as the first
unambiguous RST sentence. The following two n-over-c's would be disambiguated on
the strength of (28b); and for the last sentence (28a) and (28b) may be assumed to fail.
Thus a second pass reading on the basis of (28) would read (29) as nnncccn. Note
that, on the basis of (28), the first ambiguous n-over-c sentence in (29) must be
disambiguated as narratorial POV. A passage from To the Lighthouse, the beginning of
III.13, may serve as a full example:
(30)
Mr Ramsay had almost done reading. One hand hovered over the page as if to be in
readiness to turn it the very instant he had finished it. He sat there bareheaded with the
wind blowing his hair about, extraordinarily exposed to everything. He looked very
old. He looked, James thought, getting his head now against the Lighthouse, now
against the waste of waters running away into the open, like some old stone lying on
the sand;
Ehrlich comments that the text here "begins as narration" and "later on becomes
James's RST" (122 n. 6). She then, somewhat off-handedly, concedes that readers may
also "retroactively identify the first half of this paragraph as James's RST". Indeed this
appears to be a necessary step, and therefore (28a) should be modified to read as
follows: [End of p. 362]
(31)
If a sentence contains character oriented subjective expressions or is accompanied by
a parenthetical indicating a reflector, then backtrack and test whether the preceding
sentences can also be read as representations of this character's POV. If so, move the
beginning of this RST episode back by a suitable number of sentences.
Under this revised strategy, the sequence of the abstract example in (29) would now
be read as nnccccn (instead of nnncccn). It is interesting to note that Ehrlich, albeit
half-heartedly, here comes very close to McHale's so-called integrational model of the
reading process, "whereby sentences give rise to interpretative reconstructions which
in turn affect the interpretation of subsequent and even, retrospectively, of preceding
sentences" (1983: 39).
A reading strategy like the one detailed in (28) and (31a) can be a powerful discourseanalytical tool. However, as noted above, many of Ehrlich's assumptions are either too
general or inherently implausible; and therefore it is not surprising that there are
passages where her model does not operate smoothly, and sometimes conspicuously
fails to work at all. To begin with, POV attribution in passages containing
representations of dialogue is hampered by Ehrlich's assumption that RST and POV
are equivalent. Consider the following passage from Mrs. Dalloway where Rezia is in
consultation with Sir William Bradshaw:
(32)
Sir William explained to her the state of the case. He [Septimus] had threatened to kill
himself. There was no alternative. It was a question of law. He would lie in bed in a
beautiful house in the country. The nurses were admirable. Sir William would visit
him once a week. (Mrs Dalloway, 107; Ehrlich, 75)
The first sentence is followed by a series of RST sentences that "derive their
interpretation as RST from their semantic dependence on the predicate of the [...]
preceding sentence Sir William explained to her the state of the case" (75). Since RST
is closely linked to character POV, Bradshaw's RST is an expression of his POV. We
may perhaps add that even the first sentence is already infected with doctor's jargon
(the state of the case) and approximates Bradshaw's professional view of a patient, as
opposed to Rezia's view of her husband. (The narrator, at this point, is neither
"equidistant from all characters", nor does he/she "totally identify" with Bradshaw;
and the reader is, of course, well advised to keep his/her critical distance as well.)
Within the RST section, as must be expected, all value judgments (e.g., beautiful
house, admirable nurses) clearly originate with Bradshaw, although the reader, and
apparently Rezia, too, recognize them as insincere feints.
While this augmented reading is still reasonably compatible with Ehrlich's
assumptions, it only works up to a point. As soon as we reach the last [End of p. 363]
sentence in (32), presumably a shifted version of ~I will visit him once a week, the
non-pronominal speaker identification Sir William strongly suggests that this is now
not so much what Bradshaw says, but what Rezia hears. If this is true we have an
interesting conflict between one character's RST and another character's perception (=
also RST, in Ehrlich's model). Thus, unnoticed by Ehrlich, the passage apparently
displays one of the shifts in POV typical of Woolf (many similar shifts occur in the
same scene). The last sentence is still RST; and Bradshaw is still its subjectiveexpressive Self; however, a new and additional POV now originates with Rezia, and a
change in orientation has been accomplished fluidly, without any of the more
noticeable formal breaks such as an explicit parenthetical or a new paragraph or any
of the other violations of coherence conditions detailed by Ehrlich. Ehrlich's failure to
recognize this POV switch is due to her inability to place the phenomenon "heard
speech" within her concept of extended RST. As argued above, heard speech allows
(and sometimes manifests) two POVs: that of its speaker and that of its hearer. The
fact that one character's speech may be another character's perception also reaffirms
what should have been obvious from the outset: that the alleged logical link between
RST and POV is, within a heuristic framework, purely accidental.
Another problematic area is the assumed role of parentheticals or, as Ehrlich calls
them, "sentences containing a parenthetical" (SCPs). Suppose a passage is liberally
are not attributed to the character whose speech is represented in this passage.
Rather, they are interpreted as objective descriptions of the way in which the
character's speech act is performed; thus, in our terms, they represent the
narrator's perspective on the character's speech act. (70)
But it is really not at all clear why these elements "are not attributed to" Mr. Tansley,
or to any other character, and why they must be attributed to the narrator's POV in this
manner. Nor am I convinced that this is a competent reader's spontaneous
interpretation. Suppose, particularly in the light of the evidence of heard speech, that
Mr. Tansley's rude behavior is perceived as such by Lily Briscoe (spoken to) and/or
Mrs. Ramsay (listening), from either or both hearers' POV. Indeed, suppose Mr.
Tansley himself is aware of his bad manners the moment he makes his inconsiderate
remark - in which case there would be no cause for assuming a change of POV at all.
In fact, eight lines down from (36), surely not too distant for a context-sensitive
approach, we encounter the following passage: [End of p. 365]
(37)
Still, he wished he had known how to answer Miss Briscoe properly; he wished it had
not come out all in a jerk like that. 'You'd be sick.' (To the Lighthouse, 101)
How much of a surprise is (37)? Are we now hurriedly readjusting our understanding
of (36)? Surely a more adequate reading strategy should have allowed for this
possibility from the very start. For a related example consider (38), which presents
Lily Briscoe trying to evade Mr. Ramsay:
(38)
She fetched herself a chair. She pitched her easel with her precise, old-maidish
movements on the edge of the lawn, not too close to Mr. Carmichael, but close
enough for his protection. (To the Lighthouse, 167-8; Ehrlich, 72)
This time it is the expressions with her precise, old-maidish movements that
clearly reflect a perspective that is distinct from Lily Briscoe's and must be
attributed to a narrator, as this is linguistic material that cannot appropriately
be attributed to a character. (72)
Ehrlich spends a whole page (73) on following this up with a considerable amount of
linguistic hard evidence (including modification tests producing semantically deviant
and even ungrammatical sentences) to the effect that the material in question is not,
nor could it ever be, attributable to Lily's POV. And it is again begging the question.
Is this how one reads the passage? For one thing, it is surely not humanly impossible
for Lily to be aware of the image she projects, or thinks she projects. Again the
answer is to be found in the context, although this time it comes five pages down:
(39)
- all except myself, thought Lily, girding at herself bitterly, who am not a woman, but
a peevish, ill-tempered, dried-up old maid presumably. (To the Lighthouse, 174)
So, just as Mr. Tansley is aware of being rude, Lily thinks she looks like a "dried-up
old maid", which, of course, is not at all inconceivable, nor does it in any way mean
that she is one. It is very likely, I think, that a competent reader (who, at this stage,
must have quite a detailed mental picture of Lily) will confidently - or perhaps, I
grant, provisionally - read the whole of (38) as an expression of Lily's POV. In fact,
not reading it so is a serious error, not only because the character orientation is
supported five pages later, in (39), but because it amounts to misconstruing Lily,
denying her the ability of critical self-assessment. Indeed the subjective bitterness of
this expression of her inferiority complex actively engages our sympathy in a way no
"objective", [End of p. 366] factual, narratorial statement (about an unattractive
spinster?) could. Again Ehrlich's seemingly rigorous and "descriptively adequate" (2)
approach supports what is demonstrably a misreading. Wrong here, how often is it
wrong elsewhere?
Conclusion
Credit is due to Ehrlich for incorporating RST, POV and a set of reading strategies
within an integrated framework which carries considerable explanatory power.
Unfortunately, many of her root assumptions are based on speculative and
questionable generalizations. What is urgently needed is a definition of RST that is
aware of the danger involved in the compounding of speech and thought, a better
understanding of the coexistence of RST and parentheticals, and an account of the
interplay between RST and other forms of speech, thought and sense data
representation. As in most literary studies, POV turns out to be an interesting and
useful concept, but only if it is held to be of a different order than RST. Finally, as the
discussion of Ehrlich's POV assignments has shown, a lack of interpretative
foundation can result in seriously inadequate readings. Of course, explaining ordinary
or natural reading strategies is a legitimate, even necessary, aim of discourse analysis;
but it will not get far with sophisticated literary texts unless it takes into account the
intuitions of informed and competent readers.
REFERENCES
A. Theoretical Texts
Banfield, Ann, 1982.
Unspeakable Sentences: Narration and Representation in the Language of
Fiction. London: Routledge.
Chatman, Seymour, 1986.
Characters and Narrators: Filter, Slant, and Interest-Focus. Poetics Today 7.2:
189-204.
Cohn, Dorrit, 1978.
Transparent Minds: Narrative Modes for Presenting Consciousness in Fiction.
Princeton U.P.
_____, 1981.
The Encirclement of Narrative: On Franz Stanzel's Theorie des Erzhlens.
Poetics Today 2.2: 157-182.
Ehrlich, Susan, 1990.
Point of View: A Linguistic Analysis of Literary Style. London: Routledge.
Epstein, E.L., 1982.
Communicating the Conscious. Times Literary Supplement (19 November
1982): 1280.
---.
To the Lighthouse. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1964.
[20 Aug 2000]