As a writer who is instinctively drawn to first person, I’ve always thought of third person fiction as somehow more ‘proper’; more grownup, more difficult. In fact the main thing that’s tricky with third person is being clear about what effects you intend to achieve. Because third person offers a writer many options.
Perhaps the most straight forward usage is that which is restricted to a single character or where a writer shifts from one restricted third person point of view to another, as in Anita Desai’s Clear Light of Day. Restricted third person has many of the advantages of first person – it takes the reader into your protagonist’s head, it shows the world from her/his point of view. But it also adds a layer of distance; the character becomes a specimen held at arm’s length. To my mind it adds a sliver of ice, which is why I used it for my female protagonist in The Voyage Home. Updike uses it brilliantly in the Rabbit books; when he switches from Rabbit’s point of view to that of Ruth or Janice it is electrifying.
Then there is the third person which takes a step further back, which sees not just into the head of each character, but sees into all simultaneously, revealing to the reader the conflicting thoughts and impulses of all who appear in the novel.
Thirdly, there is the God-like third person of classic Victorian novelists (and I always think of George Eliot as the finest exponent); the third person that not only knows what all characters are thinking, but that also passes judgement upon them.
The God-like third person fell deeply out of fashion for a while, and in the wrong hands it can be clunky, as in ‘He was a bad, unfriendly man’. ‘No!’ shrieks the teacher in me, ‘Reveal his badness through his speech and actions.’ But in the hands of a skilful writer, ‘telling’ can be just what you want.
In all types of third person (unlike first person), the writer is free to present the character in language which may differ from the character’s own, but which may instead reveal some inner truth. That is to say, one can shift away from what is ‘realistic’, to work on a more poetic or symbolic level. If an ill-educated, disaffected, but idealistic teenage boy’s point of view is presented in the third person in grammatically correct and perfectly controlled prose, the effect will be markedly different from using his ‘realistic’ first person voice. The writer can exercise greater control over the reader’s response to the character. Thus third person can be a great equaliser; it can also explore the thoughts and feelings of those who are inarticulate; a baby, a stroke victim, a mute.
But beware – avoid the temptation to write in beautiful literary prose, just because you are using the third person. Precision of voice must always trump elegant literary style. Here’s Katherine Mansfield, writing about fitting the third person voice to her character in her story ‘Bliss’: ‘I chose not only the length of every sentence, but even the sound of every sentence – I chose the rise and fall of every paragraph to fit her – and to fit her on that day at that very moment.’
Four days after Bunny was born the baby-sitter came to loll in front of the television set – Mrs Moosup with arms too fat for sleeves – and Petal hauled a dress that wouldn’t easily show stains over her slack belly and leaking breasts and went out to see what she could find. Setting a certain tone. And through her pregnancy with Sunshine the next year, fumed until the alien left her body. Turmoil bubbled Quoyle’s dull waters. For it was he who drove the babies around, sometimes brought them to meetings, Sunshine in a pouch that strapped on his back, Bunny sucking her thumb and hanging on his trouser leg. The car littered with newspapers, tiny mittens, torn envelopes, teething rings. On the back seat a crust of toothpaste from a trodden tube. Soft-drink cans rolled and rolled. THE SHIPPING NEWS by E Annie Proulx.
This passage is from The Shipping News, near the beginning, where author Annie Proulx is revealing back story with impressive economy, using a few actions and images to cover a span of years. The point of view shifts from Petal (fuming until the alien left her body) to Quoyle in the littered car. The authorial voice knows everyone’s thoughts and is not afraid to summarise: is not even afraid of telling rather than showing! ‘Turmoil bubbled Quoyle’s dull waters’ equals ‘Quoyle was miserable.’ She has dressed up the telling in a fancy image and poetic language, but it is nevertheless a statement of the character’s feelings. And it seems to me to work very well, this all-knowing authorial voice which summarises nine months of pregnancy in a sentence, then dwells on a dried crust of toothpaste; which zips along so merrily that you are not always even sure if the point of view is authorial or filtered through a character. That very uncertainty generates humour (Mrs. Moosup ‘arms too fat for sleeves’ – her own sartorial problem? Or Quoyle’s observation? ‘Setting a certain tone.’ Says who? Quoyle? Annie Proulx? ) In my opinion this kind of third person is the hardest of all to get away with: try it for yourself and see.
On this morning, when, after breakfast and the performance of a few household duties, Lizzie Borden will murder her parents, she will, on rising, don a simple cotton frock – but, under that, went a long, starched cotton petticoat; another short, starched cotton petticoat; long drawers; woollen stockings; a chemise; and a whalebone corset that took her viscera in a stern hand and squeezed them very tightly. She also strapped a heavy linen napkin between her legs because she was menstruating. In all these clothes, out of sorts and nauseous as she was, in this dementing heat, her belly in a vice, she will heat up a flat-iron on a stove and press handkerchiefs with the heated iron until it is time for her to go down to the cellar woodpile to collect the hatchet with which our imagination – ‘Lizzie Borden with an axe’ – always equips her, just as we always visualise St Catherine rolling along her wheel, the emblem of her passion. THE FALL RIVER AXE MURDERS by Angela Carter.
Angela Carter quite unashamedly takes up the mantle of the God-like third person narrator. She knows her character, she knows what will happen to her, she knows every sorry detail of her life, and she judges her. She even appeals to her readers (‘Our imagination... just as we always visualise...’) making us viewers of the doomed antics of her character. This story opens with an incredible sequence in which Carter describes the geography and history of New England, and the appalling summer heat and Victorian work ethic which plays such a role in the story. It is a truly filmic opening, zooming from long-shot of the entire area, into close up of her chosen character. This kind of masterly movement and control, this apparently objective description, allied to the confident authorial opinionating, are all techniques available only when writing in the third person. Note the segue through the tenses in the second paragraph – is she breaking rules? The story is a vehicle for the writer’s sparkling intelligence and wit; we move from the well-researched, even pedantic, list of Victorian undergarments, to the expressive shorthand of ‘th dementing heat’, to St Catherine and the emblem of her passion. Carter is more interested in ideas than character, and in this story she throws out ideas like sparks from a firework.
