Narrative Perspective In Jane Austen's Emma Austen

In Emma Austen uses narrative perspective to shape the reader 's experience and interactions with the novel. Although most of the novel is narrated from Emma 's point of view, Mr. Knightley perspective is presented to the reader through dialogue and free indirect discourse. Though we the reader get other view points besides that of Emma 's and Mr. Knightley 's it is usually that of an omniscient narrator. The narrator while critical of Emma is not the novel 's voice of reason though that honor belongs to Mr. Knightly. The reason for this is that Mr. Knightley, can and does call Emma out on certain behavior which the narrator can not do due to possibly existing outside the story. Mr. Knightly 's is the novel 's voice of reason because he can and does correct Emma when she is at fault. This is something that the narrator does not do and probably can 't do anyway. Mr. Knightly 's point of view serves as an alternative and superior point of view when …show more content…
Knightly’s judgment with him being introduced to us as a “sensible man”. Though Emma while being an intimate and old friend of Mr. Knightly 's has no reason to distrust him either at times feels that his judgments can be overly harsh or wrong at times. We the reader are told as much in the first chapter through a quick peek inside Emma 's head through indirect discourse

“Mr. Knightley, in fact, was one of the few people who could see faults in Emma Woodhouse, and the only one who ever told her of them: and though this was not particularly agreeable to Emma herself, she knew it would be so much less so to her father, that she would not have him really suspect such a circumstance as her not being thought perfect by every body.”

Though Emma may not always agree with his criticisms and judgments Mr. Knightley ends up being correct in his assessments. When it comes to the matter of Frank Churchill character there is no change in this