One particular moment within the text that grabbed my attention and made me even frustrated with the novel was on page 338. The moment Mr. Fairlie\u2019s narration begins he takes it upon himself to declare, \u201cI will endeavor to remember what I can (under protest), and to write what I can (also under protest); and what I cant remember and cant write, Louis must remember, and write for me. He is an ass, and I am an invalid: and we are likely to make all sorts of mistakes\u201d (336). Here Mr. Fairlie states that he as a narrator cannot be trusted. The fact that Mr. Fairlie is openly claiming within the beginning of his narration that he cannot attest to the absolute truth within his writing forces us to read this section of the novel with great scrutiny, as we readers simply cannot fully trust what is being said about the events in any way. How are we to know what is being withheld and what is correct? The declaration of this that Mr. Fairlie openly states about himself not only forces the reader to question his validity, but it also forces the reader to wonder why Marian, a strong and intuitive woman, is able to trust Mr. Fairlie to help out Laura amidst her engagement troubles. If Mr. Fairlie cannot be trusted as a narrator, how can he be trusted as an advocate for Laura? Not only does Mr. Fairlie force the reader to question his trustworthiness and accountability throughout the story, but Laura also shows moments when she does not seem to be \u2018remembering\u2019 the full truth, as seen within her conversation with Marian after she speaks with the woman in white down by the boat house. The fact that the narrators at times show signs of forgetting or openly claiming that they may not be writing the full truth is very problematic, because it forces the reader to question the authenticity of all that is said and happening.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One particular moment within the text that grabbed my attention and made me even frustrated with the novel was on page 338. The moment Mr. Fairlie\u2019s narration begins he takes it upon himself to declare, \u201cI will endeavor to remember what I can (under protest), and to write what I can (also under protest); and … Continue reading Trusting the narrator<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2615,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[111380,108029],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-360-victorian-sexualities","category-spring-2015"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2615"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}