Free Indirect Discourse In Northanger Abbey

The Use of Free Indirect Discourse in Northanger Abbey

"The novel as a whole is a phenomenon multiform in style and variform, in speech and voice. In it the investigator is confronted with several heterogeneous stylistic unities, often located on different linguistic levels and subject to different stylistic controls." p 261

-"Discourse in the Novel", M.M. Bahktin

The novel as a genre, is defined by a multitude of languages and dialects, which, broken down on the various spectrums of type, from proper to colloquial speech, class, and age is essential for the novel to in fact be a genre. Furthermore, the author is a sort of conductor who orchestrates, organizes even, the various languages, dialects, and voices of the novel, thereby

She had long suspected the family to be very high, and this made it certain. Such insolence of behaviour as Miss Tilney's she had never heard of in her life!'" (Austen, 93). The second volume of Northanger Abbey opens with an example of free indirect discourse which uses the language of Isabella Thorpe. It is interesting to note that the narrator transitions from the third person narrative in the preceding sentence "Isabella, on hearing the particulars of the visit, gave a different explanation" to using quotes to offset exploiting the use of first person point of view in the following sentence. In presenting this use of free indirect discourse in quotation, the narrator is giving special attention to Isabella's own tendency towards pride and

Additionally, free indirect discourse also has allowed the reader a glimpse of the internal dynamics of characters: Catharine's over-active imagination, John Thorpe's vanity and knack for hyperbole, and Isabella's superficiality. The editorial comments which have been presented are no less important to the novel, dealing predominantly with Catharine's ignorance, the conventions of the Gothic novel, as well as the emphasis on wealth and position in marriage that often preoccupied high society.

Sources Consulted

Anderson, Benedict. "Imagined Communities." New York: Verso, 1991.

Austen, Jane. Northanger Abbey, Lady Susan, The Watsons, Sanditon / c Jane Austen . Ed. James Kinsley and John Davie. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Axelrod, Mark. "The Poetics of Postmoderne Parody in Austen`s Northanger Abbey." The Poetics of Novels. New York: St. Martin`s Press, INC., 1999. Pgs 28-54.

Page, Norman. The Language of Jane Austen. New York: Harper & Row Publishers, INC.