Somewhere the
author must break into the privacy of his characters and open their
minds to us. And again it is doubtless his purpose to shift the point
of view no more often than he need; and if the subject can be
completely rendered by showing it as it appears to a single one of the
figures in the book, then there is no reason to range further.
Haphazard and unnecessary plunges into the inner life of the
characters only confuse the effect, changing the focus without
compensating gain. But which _is_ the centre, which is the mind that
really commands the subject? The answer is not always evident at once,
nor does it seem to be always correctly divined in the novels that we
read. But of course in plenty of stories there can be little doubt;
there is somebody in the middle of the action who is clearly the
person to interpret it for us, and the action will accordingly be
faced from his or her position. In Flaubert's Bovary there could be no
question but that we must mainly use the eyes of Emma herself; the
middle of the subject is in her experience, not anywhere in the
concrete facts around her. And yet Flaubert finds it necessary, as I
said, to look _at_ her occasionally, taking advantage of some other
centre for the time being; and why he does so a nearer inspection of
his subject will soon show.
Here we have, then, the elements of the novelist's method--essentially
few and simple, but infinite in their possibilities of fusion and
combination.
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