narrative frames Flashcards
gutter critic
Eric Berlatsky ‘lost in the gutter: within and between Frames in Narrative and Narrative theory
Eric Berlatsky’s narrative ‘gutter’ – the in-between spaces formed by narrative frames – and refuses to inhabit the centre of fiction: the texts do not testify to a truthful core of narrative action, but interest themselves more in the edges than the body of the text
he observes: ‘the physical liminality of frames and their capacity to direct interpretation’ and goes on to emphasize the fecundity of the space between frames and pictures as the ‘gutters between… in which interpretation is enacted.’ Thus it is the spatial distance formed by the narrative frames that allow the reader the freedom to speculate and interpret.
critic ‘an ant’ on the difference between lockwood and nelly as narrators
Nelly Deans narrative fuction is clarified by Anat Rosenberg is that of the ‘embedded narrator’ while lockwood is the ‘frame narrator’, the difference between the consonant and the dissonant narrator whereby the former (nelly) is closely related to the narrative through experience and the latter (lockwood) is temporally and personally distanced from the events.
Lockwood herbs
Lockwood proclaims at the end of Volume II, ‘ill extract wholesome medicines from Mrs Dean’s bitter herbs’. The contrast between ‘wholesome’ and ‘bitter’ sets up a visual distinction that can be read in terms of the narrative frame and the story it contains; one need not resemble the other to guide the reader to judgement and interpretation.
Hartright interprets Anne
Hartright deduces ‘self-control’ from Anne’s ‘wistfully attentive eyes’. Indeed, he sees ‘nothing in her language or her actions’ which would have enabled him to interpret her possible insanity
Heathcliff the murderer
John Sutherland: in his essay ‘Is Heathcliff a murderer’ enjoys this freedom of interpretation due to narrative frames, stating ‘for what it’s worth, I believe he did kill Hindley, although for any unprejudiced jury it is likely that enough ‘reasonable doubt’ would remain to acquit him.’
Sutherland balances the ‘worth’ of his conclusion against the space for ‘doubt’ and subjectivity; no two readings are the same, an idea itself central to the diverse narrative voices of the text.
. Bronte engages with a similar multiplicity of time frames
Lockwood ‘looked at my watch and soliloquised on the length of the night: ‘not yet three o’clock! I could have taken an oath it had been six – time stagnates here – we must surely have retired to rest at eight!’ / “Always at nine in winter, and always rise at four,” said my host.’
In this moment, time is analogue (‘three o’clock); it is frozen (‘time stagnates’); it structures rural life (‘rise at four in winter’) and it shapes routine (‘always at nine’). In this confusion of times that rebound and ring against each other, the readers asks what is the central time of the text? We are, like Lockwood, left on the temporal and narrative outskirts.
Count F on diary
and then Hartright
‘charmed, refreshed, delighted me!…the easy grace of style, the charming outbursts of womanly feeling… the presentation of my own character is masterly in the extreme”.
: ‘I shrank then… from invading the innermost sanctuary of her heart, and laying it open to others’.
