Point of View
Point of View in D. H. Lawrence’s
“Samson and Delilah”
“Samson and Delilah” is in the broadest sense a short story written in the roving omniscient point of view. That is, a story with an omniscient narrator that enters the minds of the principal characters only. However, in the execution of the story, Lawrence chose to keep the actual thoughts of the characters to a minimum, presenting the reader with only a few, generally emotional, responses to events. The two principal characters in the story, Willie Nankervis and Alice Nankervis, are rarely presented to the reader empathetically. Instead, Lawrence presents their thoughts and emotions briefly, and often colors them with authorial opinions.
The first time we meet Willie Nankervis we are not even given his name. Lawrence uses general, non–invasive descriptions of him that do not point towards a narrator capable of entering characters’ minds, such as saying that Willie “looked from side to side with cautious curiosity.” (p. 125) However, indications soon appear that the narrator is in some degree subjective. Lawrence undermines the authority of this narrator by putting uncertainty into the descriptions, using phrases like “apparently in the prime of life,” or “seemed a little excited…” (125) This undermining of the narrator’s authority enables Lawrence to comment on his characters in a way that would normally be considered authorial intrusion. Take the following passage:
…he seemed a little excited and pleased with himself, watchful, thrilled, veering along in a sense of mastery and of power in conflict.The houses began to close on the road, he was entering the straggling, formless, desolate mining village, that he knew of old.
–page 125
Are Willie’s thoughts being presented to the reader? The various emotions that are ascribed to him, such as being thrilled, or watchful, are merely authorial perceptions, as Lawrence makes clear with the use of the word Ôseemed.’ As readers, we begin to suspect more than mere authorial commentary as the string of adjectives continues and reaches “sense of mastery and of power in conflict.” The feelings here are too complex to be mere suppositions by an intruding authorial voice—-they carry with them the weight of authority. This is confirmed by the revelation immediately following, that Willie knew the village of old, information that could only be accessible to the omniscient narrator.
So it is that on the very first page of the story, Lawrence establishes a narrative point of view that alternately seems able and unable to penetrate the minds of characters, and that offers what are clearly surmises and opinions regarding their state of mind.
Instances of this oddly skewed point of view recur throughout the tale. One of the demands of the story as Lawrence conceives of it is the requirement that the true nature of the relationship between Willie and Alice remain concealed to the reader until Lawrence is ready to reveal it. Therefore we first see Alice Nankervis as “the landlady,” (126) and thereafter as “the woman” (126) until the relationship becomes clear. As the story progresses we get a series of different authorial impressions of Willie’s state of mind. Several more times his state of mind is obliquely referred to with the use of the same phrasing as earlier: “he seemed….”
However, the need to keep the marital relationship concealed forces a move to the mind of Alice Nankervis, the landlady. Willie’s thoughts recede into the background, and Lawrence brings the same technique to bear on entering Alice’s perceptions. Willie goes from being referred to by name to being “the stranger.” Lawrence provides another passage of gradual segue into her perceptions:
The stranger sat at the end of the table and ate with the tired, quiet soldiers. Now, the landlady was interested in him. Her brow was knit rather tense, there was a look of panic in her large, healthy face……there was a new, dangerous note in her voice.
–page 128
This passage begins by shifting gradually from his perceptions, his point of view, to hers; and Lawrence again includes authorial modifiers that detract from his authority as a narrator: words like “rather.” The transition culminates in the flat statement, “…Her anger began to rise,” (129) which is undoubtedly firmly in Alice’s perceptual world.
As the story progresses there is a continual swing back and forth between the thoughts of these two characters, because Lawrence wants to make certain feelings clear while maintaining the essential mystery of their relationship. To provide full access to the thoughts of one or the other would be to eliminate this central matter of the story, and essentially destroy it. Lawrence’s specific purpose becomes most clear after the initial scenes, when the alternation between their two points of view has become smooth and requires no more artifice and preparation.
The feelings then revealed tend towards the broad and towards the physical. “He knew that she wanted to strike him,” (131) we are told on Willie’s behalf. “Then she bethought herself. She would gather her forces.” (132) These statements are firmly in the mind of the characters, but come as isolated instances in a larger framework of authorial commentary. The principal insights gained into the minds of the characters is essentially physical, as in the following passages:
The landlady sobbed heart–brokenly. The man watched her large breasts shaken. They seemed to cast a spell over his mind.–p. 134
The woman rose, and sank, faint, on to the seat against the wall. Her breast heaved, she could not speak, she thought she was going to die.
–p.136
Limiting the mental processes to those directly related to the body is also required by the plan that Lawrence has for the story as a whole. The fundamental reason to use only the most physical of thoughts to expose the inner workings of his characters is because the climax of the story will depend on the physical. Similarly, all the authorial commentary must be framed so it undermines itself, for the final scene of the story must be presented baldly, with little direct emotional exposition.
Leading up to this climax are the moments of clearest insight into the characters of Willie and Alice. On page 139 Alice gets a whole paragraph devoted to her thoughts, and this is the last time that the reader has any clear impression of her mind as a whole; from that point until the close of the story there are only two more references to her state of mind, both referring to sexual self–control and sexual domination:
Her heart beat fiery hot as he lifted his face to her. She breathed heavily, averting her face, almost losing her self-control.”And what do you take me to be?” she cried, in real helplessness.
…
“I take you,” he said, with that laconic truthfulness which exercised such power over her, “to be the deuce of a fine woman…”
Her heart beat fiery hot…
–page 140
To provide more thought (as opposed to emotions and physical reactions) at this moment would be to damage the thrust of the story as a whole. And just as Lawrence’s pick-and-choose narrator eliminates all but the physical reactions from our view of Alice’s mind, so he does for Willie as well. In the last three pages of the story, the only chances we get to see Willie’s mind working are when they present a sexual or physical image: “His face was lifted watching her, watching her soft, averted face, and the softly heaving mass of her breasts,” or “…feeling his arms with his hands.” (140)
This elimination of all but the physical perspective brings with it a return of the authorial commentary, with words like “slightly” and “as if” and “seemed” reappearing before descriptive images, again undermining the authority of the voice.
The arc described by the shifting nature of point of view in this story is clearly aimed towards a purpose, that of reflecting the nature of the story itself. Exigencies of the plot require an element of secrecy, of concealing facts from the reader; yet the thrust of the story is to reveal a fundamental sexual and emotional connection between Willie and Alice Nankervis. Lawrence consciously uses the ability of the author to intrude as a device for smoothing the path not just from one mind to another, but from an omniscient narrator to an effaced one. It is this achievement that I term the limited authorial narrator: a hybrid of the elements of first person and third person narration. By taking from the first person narrators the ambiguous frame of reference and dubious reliability, Lawrence is able to make the reader accept an ambiguous frame of reference despite an omniscient narrator—-by definition one that knows all. This permits a story that is notable for what it doesn’t tell us about the inner lives of its protagonists—-a story that is nonetheless as revealing about human nature as a purely psychological portrait of the Nankervis couple would have been.
All citations taken from Lawrence, D. H., England, My England, (New York: Penguin Books, date unknown), pp. 125-141 (the story “Samson and Delilah”).
