Analysis of narrative distance in henry James ‘the portrait of a lady

Abstract

This study seeks to study narrative distance in Henry James’ The Portrait of a Lady. It analyzes the narrative to show how information is dramatically presented to minimize authorial intrusion. The study uses Gerard Genette’s Narrative Discourse on the narrative as the instrument for determining how the narrative achieves narrator distance. Henry James is one of the key proponents of dramatic method of narration in the early 20th century, and his experiment with this technique of narration in The Portrait of a Lady proves how narrator influence may be suppressed. The analysis focuses on the narration of events and narration of speech to determine the range of distance between the narrator and the fictive elements in the narrative. The study reveals through the analysis that narrator distance increases when the narrator presents information from the perspective of the characters themselves, and there is a scenic, experiential approach to characterization and events—leading to maximum information to the reader. However, it decreases when the narrator presents information from his own perspective—leading to minimum information to the reader. Consequently, The Portrait of a Lady is an exemplar of the modernist narrative that tries to produce the novel like drama. In the final analysis, the study makes recommendations to readers and researchers of fiction on some of the myriad ways of deriving maximum information from the modern narrative.