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No there are a number of reasons jane austen was

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on the cutting edge of literature She was a pioneer

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in terms of writing about ordinary women struggles with money

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and class and she really helped to find their struggles

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to stay awake during some of the boring dances they

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were subject to do Austin was also ahead of the

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curve in her use of free indirect discourse I understand

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that concept we need to think about narrators well in

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early novels narrative we're usually characters in the novels who

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happen to be telling the story sometimes by recording the

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events of the story in letters as if being a

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character in the story wasn't hard enough and no they

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didn't get paid more for the extra work We call

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these kinds of narrators homo dia jet iq and note

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that dia jesus means world of the story and homo

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means same in other words a narrator that exists in

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the same world as the story Pretty nice when words

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mean exactly what you want him to know What a

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rare treat Well jane austen however doesn't use thes homo

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dietetic narrators but rather hetero dietetic one's narrators who exist

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In a different world than the ones where the story

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takes place I'ii a free floating non character tells the

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story so the characters in the story can just sit

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back and chillax by using a hetero die jet iq

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Narrator austin is also able to use free indirect discourse

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which combines the narrator's voice with the character's voice Even

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though the hetero dietetic narrator isn't tied to the reports

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of anyone in particular it can slip into the thoughts

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and perspectives of characters without even having to use quotation

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marks or clunky indicators like she thought Or he said

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or she whispered stealthily And we can probably all agree

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that the best literature involved a little clunkiness as possible

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right Well we can see the technique in action if

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we take a look at this excerpt from pride and

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prejudice Well it starts off with a bit of objective

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description There isn't really any character being injected into this

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bit of narration even ascension hat stand could've told us

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that But at the end there's a slight shift We

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no longer have a voiceless objective Narrator there's now opinion

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creeping in to be specific the opinion of the towns

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People Well as we could see free indirect discourse allows

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austin to narrate without using a particular character as the

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narrator while still managing to insert the opinions of characters

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or even groups of characters without free indirect discourse she

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might have used each individual towns person to give their

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own personal account of mr bingley which would have threatened

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to stretch private prejudice from a long novel to ah 00:02:29.4 --> [endTime] long

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