The Use of Free Indirect Discourse in Burney, Austen, and Eliot

Free indirect discourse, a narrative technique used in third-person novels, occurs when the private thoughts of a character are voiced in a narrative passage and no indicator such as "she thought" is present. This technique, also known as represented thought or style indirect libre, is a blurring of the line between the character and the narrator. Although popularized in the works of Jane Austen, free indirect discourse can be traced back even further to Fanny Burney and it first appears as third person narratives are beginning to replace epistolary and journal-like novels. Some have attributed the development to a growing confidence in authorial voice, particularly among female writers, which displaces the need to hide behind a character. In Fanny Burney's novels Camilla and Cecilia, both examples of domestic fiction, Burney does not use free indirect discourse as much to comment on her characters as she does to further what the reader already knows about them and advance the plot. As one of the first to move from epistolary writing to using free indirect discourse, Burney concentrates the technique on a few main characters. In Pride and Prejudice and Emma, Jane Austen uses the technique to increase the irony in her highly satirical novels. She comments on her characters with it, showing their mistaken notions and moral flaws, while still maintaining a supportive and approving omniscient narrator. Eliot expands the range of free indirect discourse in Middlemarch and The Mill on the Floss, a demonstration of the complete omniscient control of George Eliot. All characters, even those most highly thought of by Eliot, are second-guessed. This showcases a desire to direct every thought of the reader and makes her characters complex and sympathetic. These women, writing in different times, show the development of the use of free indirect discourse into a technique that enables authors to let the juxtaposition of their characters' thoughts and comments from the narrator tell the story.