The Narrative Nature Of Pride And Prejudice

1.1 what is the free indirect speech?

The free indirect speech 's person and tense are same to the indirect speech. But it has a difference from indirect speech, that is it has no guide sentences, the retail words themselves are the independent sentences. Because it has the same person and tense with indirect speech, the characters' speechs could blend to the narritive words easily and become the member of the narrative words.Apart from person and tense, other componences are same to the direct speech, so the other merit of the free indirect speech is that the speechs of the characters are still vivid.

1.2 how does the author use it to portary the personalities

In " Pride and Prejudice", the narrator use a lot of free indirect speechs in portarying the characters .

For example: in the 14the chapeter, when Mr. Bennet talks about Lady Catherine with his nephew Mr. Collins.

"Mr. Collins was eloquent in her praise. The subject elevated him to more than usual solemnity of manner, and with a most important aspect he protested that he had never in his life witnessed such behavior in a person of rank -- such affability and condescension as he had himself experienced from Lady Catherine. She had been graciously pleased to approve of both the discourses, which he had already had the honour of preaching before her. She had also asked him twice to dine at Rosings, and had sent for him only the Saturday before to make up her pool of quadrille in the evening. Lady Catherine was reckoned proud of many people he knew, but he had never seen anthing but affability in her. She had always spoken to him as she would to any other gentlemen; she made not the smallest objection to his joining in the society of the neighbourhood, nor to his leaving his parish occasionally for a week or two to visit his relations. She had even condescended to advise him to marry as soon as he could, provided he choose with discretion; and had once ppaid him a visit in his humble personage, where she had perfectly approved all the alternative he had been making, snd had even vouchsafed to suggest some herself -- some shelves in the closets upstairs."

In this paragraph, the first sentence is narrative sentence, the sencond one is the indirect speech sentence, after them are the free direct speech. Mr. Collins seems to repeat the ode of Lady Catherine from his memory face to face to us. One is his greasiness and slavishness, he flatters that this rude and unreasonable old woman is affability and condescension. The other is his overconfidence and stupid,he thinks that he is a man of rank and proud of this. Through this paragraph, we can find that Mr. Collins is a mixture body of slavishness and overconfidence. And his praise words to Lady Catherine show us a oppsite fact, we