Unreliable Third Person Narration? The Case of Katherine Mansfield
-
Terence Patrick Murphy
and
Kelly S. Walsh
Abstract
The concept of an unreliable third-person narrator may seem a contradiction in terms. The very act of adopting a third-person stance to tell a story would appear to entail an acceptance of a basic need for truth-telling, a commitment to what Wayne Booth terms the implied author’s “norms of the work.” Nonetheless, in the essay that follows, three of Katherine Mansfield’s short stories – “A Cup of Tea” (1922), “Bliss” (1918) and “Revelations” (1920) – will be examined in order to demonstrate how the strategic suppression of the distinction between the voice of the narrator and that of the central character can lead to a strong sense of unreliability. In order to read such narratives effectively, the reader must reappraise the value of certain other stylistic elements, including the use of directives involved with directly quoted speech, seemingly minor discrepancies between adjacent sentences and, perhaps most importantly, the structure of the fiction itself. We contend that Mansfield’s use of this form of unreliable third-person fiction is her unique contribution to the short story genre.
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Unnatural narratology and premodern narratives: Historicizing a form
- Constructing the antihero: Linguistic characterisation in current American television series
- The curse of the perceptual: a case from kinaesthesia
- Unreliable Third Person Narration? The Case of Katherine Mansfield
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Unnatural narratology and premodern narratives: Historicizing a form
- Constructing the antihero: Linguistic characterisation in current American television series
- The curse of the perceptual: a case from kinaesthesia
- Unreliable Third Person Narration? The Case of Katherine Mansfield
