Monday, January 16, 2012
Dialogue in an epistolary novel
Normally the presence of dialogue in a novel makes the novel more believable and lends the characters more depth, not so in an epistolary novel. I find myself not believing that the characters in Desmond could accurately recall such lengthy pieces of dialogue and write them down so accurately. For instance, his conversation with Miss Fairfax in letter V. Desmond writes "verbatim" conversations he is involved in or overhears. I find this hard to believe, as it is very hard to remember so many specifics from any conversation. Jane Austen creates more believable characters without using dialogue, even when we know the character is creating a facade, i.e., Lady Susan's first letter to her brother. The letters in Lady Susan seem much more believable because they are more about the general feelings and relationships of people interspersed with some dialogue. Desmond's letters are much more dialogue filled which, oddly, make me as the reader question their validity more.
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I agree that it is odd how much dialogue is presented in Smith's "Desmond." I believe it impossible for Desmond or Mr. Bethel to recall enough of the conversations to make the letters believable. However, I begin to wonder if I would trust the narrator or be interested in the letter if all the conversations were summarized. Moreover, I do not necessarily believe that Jane Austen creates more believable characters without her use of dialogue. I believe that Austen employs dialogue to warn readers to be skeptical. In “Letter 24,” Mrs. Vernon writes to Lady De Courcy about fear for Frederica. Throughout the novel, the reader learns to trust Mrs. Vernon’s character and her ability to see through Lady Susan’s plan. Therefore, when Mrs. Vernon is able to recall her conversations with Frederica it forces me to question her motives in telling her mother about the interaction. Mrs. Vernon clearly does not like Lady Susan and her relationship with her daughter and uses this interaction to further portray Lady Susan in a negative light.
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ReplyDeleteHm, this is an interesting point. I'm not sure I've ever thought of that as a reason to doubt the truthfulness of dialogue.
ReplyDeleteFirst, because I think a lot of the big long political tracts are supposed to really lay out an argument, and a LOT of the time Desmond says that the speaker was a pompous, long-winded type.
Second, because I think it's just how you tell a story, one of those conventions that serves its purpose if losing some verisimilitude along with it.
However, I know that in Dracula, the female protagonist mentions this in a "meta" observation. Something along the lines of "I heard that if you practice, you can recreate on paper entire conversations you hear!" So the thought's certainly come up before!
And another thought:
Occasionally, you'll see asterisks say something like "in reference to a letter not reproduced here" (it comes up more later in the novel after Vol. 1) - wouldn't it be super cool if turns out in an epistolary novel that the real unreliable narrator is whoever put the letters together?
The butler... I mean, the curator did it.