Hindsight and Insight: Focalization in Four Eighteenth-Century French Novels by William F. Edmiston (review)

Book Reviews81 Monkshaven after her death. Sylvia's story is that of a woman who tried to "have a story of her own" but, being first illiterate and then taught by her treacherous, self-seeking cousin Philip, she is not "free to write" her own story and what is left behind has, literally, her husband's initials—until Gaskell rewrites her story in the "female conversation that gets the last word" in the novel (178). Both Easson and Schor make significant contributions to Gaskell studies , and both speak to and of women's speech and women's silences. Easson's selections—both what he includes and what he leaves out—are the record of that part of the woman writer's speech that most nineteenth-century critics heard, i.e., Gaskell's more assertive claims for a woman's voice: Mary Barton's testimony in a Liverpool courtroom, Gaskell's own testimony for Ruth and other "fallen women" and for the prematurely silenced Brontes. To these women's voices, critics responded in ways that threatened (attempted?) to silence the woman author. But, as Schor demonstrates, Gaskell in all her works—even her story of the ironically-termed Amazons of Cranford—reclaims a place for women's voices amidst the call for silence. CAROL A. MARTIN Boise State University WILLIAM F. EDMISTON. Hindsight and Insight: Focalization in Four Eighteenth-Century French Novels. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991. 205 p. .Having pointed out how eighteenth-century French novelists turned to the memoir-novel in order to convince the reader of the veracity of their story and also to draw the reader into participating in it (ix), William Edmiston states that his "original aim was to compare the theoretical ideal with the actual practice of several French memoir-novels" (x) of the eighteenth century . He concludes, however, that many theories of narratology "were inadequate to accommodate the kinds of focalization found in first-person fiction" (x-xi). Influenced by Dorrit Cohn's Transparent Minds (1978) and later comments on Franz Stanzel's Theories des Erzählens (1981), he uses the terms external and internal focalization "to designate the vantage points of the narrating self and the experiencing self" (2-3) and limits their use to the subject of perception, following in this Mieke Bal's Narratologies (1977). The vantage points are considered and explained (that is, internal, external, and zero focalization) and schematically posed on page 6. Then, having related focalization to the discourse of the characters, (1) direct and indirect, (2) self-quoted monologue, and (3) narrated and self-narrated monologue, as well as free indirect discourse, the author proceeds to study four eighteenthcentury French novels and to "concentrate on perception and attempt to characterize the narrator based on his or her focal choices" and "consider the ways in which the narrator delegates focalization to the experiencing self and others" (14). 82Rocky Mountain Review Edmiston then analyzes four novels which are, without a doubt, among the greatest in French literature: Les Egarements du Coeur et de l'Esprit by Crébillon fils, Le Paysan parvenu by Marivaux, Manon Lescaut by Prévost, and Diderot's La Religieuse. In "Les Egarements: Selective Focalization," Meilcour, Versac, Hortense et alii are presented in the various and often varying stages of focalization, self-narrative, contrast in attitude vis-à-vis Versac by Meilcour narrator and Meilcour character, amusement shown by the older Meilcour narrator at the younger Meilcour character before Mme de Lursay, and so on. In "Le Paysan: Temporal Ambiguity," the narrator's discourse with its numerous digressions is analyzed in terms of "narrative function," "emotive function," "conative function," and the function of "maxims and shared truths." The "double register" (44), peasant and parvenu, and a possible third register of "the author watching the narrator watching the hero" (45n3) continue the study of Jacob. Then Edmiston directs his attention to the use of the future tense (62), that is appelative, expressive and referential , and shows how "tense is not indicative of time in the absolute sense but only in the relative sense" (61). In "Manon: Manipulation and Reliability," Narrator Discourse (72-76), External Focalization (76-80), and Internal Focalization (80-87) are discussed ; the...