Love, war and lexicogrammar: Transitivity and characterisation in the Moor's Last Sigh 1

Abstract

Summary Salman Rushdie's The Moor's Last Sigh (1995) is a zestful piling up of stories, “a final scandalous skein of shaggy‐dog yarns”, but in this diversity there is also thematic unity, brought about most forcefully through the character of Aurora, the narrator's mother ‐ “most sharp‐tongued woman of her generation” ‐ and through the counterpoint of her relationship with her husband, the shadowy Abraham. This paper examines transitivity patterns in certain passages of the novel, showing how these lexicogrammatical features underpin the perception that it is Aurora in particular, but other women too, who dominate the narrative ‐ and the men in their lives. More generally, the paper points out the value of transitivity analysis in explicating reader responses to characters in fiction.