2020/2/29 Jahn: PPP/Narratology

mind style The textual evocation, especially by typical diction, rhetoric, and syntax, of a
narrator's or a character's mindset and typical patterns of thinking. See Fowler (1977:
76); Leech and Short (1981: ch. 6); Nischik (1991).

"Corto y derecho," he thought, furling the muleta. Short and straight. Corto y derecho.
(Hemingway, "The Undefeated" 201) [A bullfighter thinking in bullfighting terms.]

Ah, to be all things to all people: children, husband, employer, friends! It can be done:
yes, it can: super woman. (Weldon, "Weekend" 312) [The weary exclamation, the
enumeration of stress factors, and the ironical allusion are typical features of Martha's
mind style.]

N8.13. Following Hough (1970), the term coloring is occasionally used to refer to the local
coloring (also 'tainting' or 'contamination') of the narrator's style by a character's diction,
dialect, sociolect, or idiolect, often serving a comic or ironical purpose. Colouring is most
functional when the narrator's and the character's voices are equally distinctive (typically, in the
fiction of Austen, James, Lawrence, and Mansfield). Hough 1970; Page 1973: ch. 2; McHale
1978: 260-262; Stanzel 1984: 168-184; Fludernik 1993: 334-338. Example:

Uncle Charles repaired to the outhouse (Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist) [The original
example used by Kenner (1978: ch. 2) to illustrate what he termed the 'Uncle Charles
Principle'. The word "repaired" is typical of the character's diction.]

Ol Abe always felt relaxed and great in his Cadillac and today he felt betteranever (Selby,
Last Exit to Brooklyn) [a diegetic statement appropriating the character's "betteranever"].

N9. A Case Study: Alan Sillitoe's "The Fishing Boat Picture"

(In the following, all page number references are to the reprint of Sillitoe's story in The Penguin
Book of Modern British Short Stories, ed. Malcolm Bradbury, London: Penguin, 1988, 135-149.
The story was originally published in 1959.)

N9.1. Like many first-person narratives, Sillitoe's "Fishing-Boat Picture" is a fictional

autobiography. Harry is a mature narrator who looks back on his past life. Although he is only
fifty-two at the time of writing the story, he feels his life is all but over. Like many first-person
narrators, he has become not only older but also wiser. Looking back on his life, he realizes that
he made many mistakes, especially in his behavior towards his wife Kathy. The story's first-
person narrative situation is uniquely suited for presenting Harry's insights about his wasted life.

N9.2. The story is told in a straightforwardly chronological manner, and its timeline can be
established quite accurately (cp N4.8). The story's action begins with Harry's and Kathy's "walk
up Snakey Wood" (135). Kathy leaves Harry after six years, when he is thirty (136); so, at the
beginning he must be twenty-four. Since "it's [...] twenty-eight years since I got married" (135),
the narrating I's current age must be fifty-two. Kathy's weekly visits begin after a ten-year
interval (139), when Harry is forty. Kathy's visits continue for six years (147), and when she
dies, terminating the primary story line, the experiencing I is forty-six. A number of historical
allusions indicate that Harry's and Kathy's final six years are co-extensive with World War II
(140, 147). The narrative act itself takes place in 1951, six years after Kathy's death .

N9.3. The story's action episodes focus on Kathy, picking out their first sexual encounter, the
violent quarrel that makes her run away, her return ten years later, her ensuing weekly visits,
the repeated pawnings of the fishing-boat picture, and her death and funeral. Throughout their
relationship, Harry "doesn't get ruffled at anything" (136), and he remains unemotional and
indifferent to the point of lethargy. To the younger Harry, marriage means "only that I changed
one house and one mother for a different house and a different mother" (136). Although he
never sets foot from Nottingham (139), his main idea of a good time is reading books about far-
away countries like India (137) and Brazil (139). He cannot even cry at Kathy's funeral ("No
such luck", 148). And yet, her ignoble death -- in a state of drunkenness she is run over by a
lorry -- causes a change in him. Now he cannot forget her as he did after she left him (139-
140); the only thing he can do is obsessively review the mistakes he has made. In the final
retrospective epiphany, he realizes three things with devastating clarity: that he loved Kathy but
never showed it, that he was insensitive to her need for emotional involvement and
communication, and that her death robbed him of a purpose in life.

N9.4. The theme of becoming aware of one's own flaws can be treated well in a first-person
narrative situation. Unlike the ordinary well-spoken authorial narrator, who cannot himself be
present as a character in the story, Harry's working-class voice and diction is a functional and
characteristic feature in Sillitoe's story. His self-consciousness in telling the story ("I'd rather not
make what I'm going to write look foolish by using dictionary words", 135) and his involvement
in the story support the theme of developing self-recognition. Whereas Harry's story is an

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