Point of View, pt. 2: the Narrator's Role

In the first part of this discussion on point of view, I said:

If Suzy is the main character - most of the scenes include/follow her, the narrator shares Suzy's thoughts with us, etc. - there's no very good reason to suddenly jump into Bob's head just to show us what Bob is thinking - especially when Suzy is standing in the room with Bob. Rather, a less lazy approach would be for the narrator to continue following only Suzy, and make Bob's thoughts or feelings evident by his words, his expressions, his actions, etc. - you know: "show instead of tell" and all that. 

When this happens, I wonder Who is the narrator, exactly? How does s/he know what all of these different people are thinking?

It's an interesting question, one which, frankly, not enough writers ask as they're crafting their books. Who is the narrator? 

Often, when a story is written from the third-person perspective, the narrator isn't meant to be a character from the book. (Of course the narrator is likely going to be a character for first-person stories, but we're not going to focus on that for now.) 

It's fine if the narrator isn't a character. Generally speaking, there's no reason the voice telling us the story has to be involved in the story.

Then again, we've all read plenty of books in which the narrator intrudes upon the story, responds to it, expresses their own emotions and subjectivity on the happenings. And when this happens, there's no way around it: we're reading the words of an individual personality. And an individual personality can't know what everyone in town is thinking.

These intrusions by the narrator can be small, subtle, overdrawn, exaggerated, or anything in between. Sometimes they can be as minute as a punctuation mark or as big as a monologue.

To give some examples of this, I'm going to pick on Jane Austen. Largely this is because she's already been solidified as a classic, so it's not as though I'm going to harm her reputation by saying anything bad about her. Also - let's call it what it is - she wasn't great about all of this POV business.

In the second chapter of Pride and Prejudice, we have this line: 

Mrs Bennet deigned not to make any reply...

So Mrs Bennet doesn't say anything. That's fine. But if we think about the word choice here, Austen actually took it just a step further: Mrs Bennet deigned. What this means is that Mrs Bennet felt it would be beneath her dignity to reply. 

In this case, the narrator doesn't just tell us that Mrs Bennet didn't speak - which could have been an easy, objective thing to say - the narrator goes a step further and tells us what was going on inside Mrs Bennet's head. It's a subtle difference which hinges on just one word, but it's important. 

On its own, this isn't a problem. On the very next page (at least, on the next page of the edition I read), though, we then have this line:

Mary wished to say something very sensible, but knew not how. 

Once again, we have an example of the narrator knowing what is going on in a character's head - this time, Mary: Mary wished to do something, but didn't know how. 

In the space of two pages, we have the narrator knowing what's going on both in Mrs Bennet's head and in Mary's head.

Now then. On their own, there's nothing wrong with these two sentences. It seems this book merely has an Omniscient Third Person Narrator (that's your fancy English term for the day). And as long as the narrator doesn't have any sort of personality on her own, there's nothing inherently wrong with this.

Once the narrator intrudes and displays any sort of personality traits or opinions, though, suddenly we have a problem. Then we're not just dealing with narration; we're being exposed to another, unnamed character with her own distinct ideas. 

Let's look at a subtle example of this from the very next chapter of Pride and Prejudice:

What a contrast between him and his friend!

("Him" is Mr Bingley; "his friend" is Mr Darcy.)

As you'll know from reading the book, Bingley and Darcy have highly different personalities. This statement, then, can be seen as objective enough on its own. (There is a hint of the narrator's judgement in the sentence, but since the statement is so obviously clear to any reader - and to any other character in the book - I'll call it objective enough.)

What about that exclamation mark at the end, though?

The narrator didn't want to simply tell us that Bingley and Darcy are different. Rather, she pointed it out excitedly or emphatically. In other words, suddenly the narrator is bringing her own emotions into the mix. Not only are the two characters different - the narrator feels something about their difference.

And we can see this because of one punctuation mark.

Do you see the contradiction here?

It is okay for a narrator to know what multiple characters are thinking/wishing/feeling/etc. (The Omniscient Narrator.)

It is okay for a narrator to feel something about the events or characters of the story. (The Personal Narrator.)

It is NOT okay to have both of these - an omniscient narrator AND a personal one.

This simply doesn't work. If the narrator has a personality, then suddenly she has been characterized. And if she's characterized, then - even if she isn't named or directly addressed or anything else along these lines - she can't know what any of the other characters are thinking or feeling. She can only be inside her own head - not everyone else's. 

What do you think, though, friends? Have you noticed these sorts of things in your readings? What are some examples of books that have been handled particularly well - or particularly unwell - along these lines?