Trust is something that while intangible, can form bonds which are stronger than anything else. With this strength, trust also becomes fragile in that it requires a mutual understanding between two parties; once trust is broken once, it is difficult to repair if it can be repaired at all. The very idea of trust in societal terms today differs greatly from trust in the past. The general idea of trust has eroded slowly over the past centuries into something that requires a legal document in order to be good for anything. A moral decay has happened; for example modern credit lenders want debtors to not repay them because debt means interest, and interest means more money. This decay in trust is not recent, however, and the roots of this rot can be seen by comparing the Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway to Jane Austen’s Emma. Besides obvious changes in the culture of the two books, a change in how society views trust can be seen in how the narrator interacts with the reader. In the Emma the reader can trust everything the narrator says; in Mrs. Dalloway the reader has to judge for themselves whether or not what has been said is true and if it should be trusted. The loss in trust between the narrator and the reader mirrors the loss in trust between fellow members of society after World War 1.
In Emma, the narrator is always trustworthy and objective. Partly this comes from the fact that the narrator does not come from a certain point of view but is rather a 3rd person omniscient narrator, but this also because nothing is ever hidden from the reader. The very first sentence of the novel demonstrates this. “Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her.” (Austen, 7) The first description the reader gets of Emma is not one that changes at all throughout the story. Everything the reader needs to know is presented upfront.
Mrs. Dalloway, however, is completely different. The reader’s perceptions of the character’s individual traits in the novel do not come from one source, but from the other characters themselves. The reader has to determine any bias one character might have against another one, and decided whether the knowledge that has been gained is valid. For example, after Peter Walsh’s first meeting with Clarissa in 30 years, Peter’s narration seems overly critical of Clarissa’s character. He says “ ‘There’s my Elizabeth’- that sort of thing – why not ‘Here’s Elizabeth’ simply? – trying to make out, like most mothers, that things are what they’re not” (Woolf, 55) the reader is left to determine what is actually going on here. Is Clarissa actually like most mothers; worldly and obsessed with class like Peter accuses her of being, is Peter still jealous and overreacting, or is it a combination of both situations?
The first real description of Clarissa Dalloway comes roughly half way through the novel, and it is given by Peter Walsh. The description flip flops between praising her and condemning her for her worldly ways. Because of this, the reader has a very difficult time determining the true character of Clarissa.
The difference in narration between Emma and Mrs. Dalloway points to the difference in the general public trust at the time the novels were set in. Mrs. Dalloway is set several years after World War One, a war which drastically changed the European psyche. This war caused every major tenet upon which European society functioned to suddenly become, in a sense, untrustworthy. The difference in the level of trust before the war and after it can be demonstrated by comparing Emma, where the reader can trust everything given to them, much like citizens of European empires who trusted national values and were led into World War One, to Mrs. Dalloway, where the reader must question everything, even the narrator, much like those who had to re-evaluate their lives after the Great War.
I've read a good deal of books that have unreliable narrators- narrators that you would deem untrustworthy. I have decided that I would prefer to read novels in which the narrators are trustworthy, especially when I'm reading a book for fun. I would much rather focus on the interactions between characters instead of trying to figure out what the narrator is trying to say.
ReplyDeleteOscar Wilde said something about how there is no moral or immoral book or art. I think that this correlates with the narrator or the way in which a story or novel is presented. Trustworthiness is a virtue and therefore, for the narrator or mode of storytelling to be trustworthy or not is a difficult thing to say. The mode is only a tool used by the writer in order to make their novel what it is. The only thing that you can really trust to a narrator is the fact that a story will be told.
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