Shifts in Narrative Voices in Four Novels of Emilia Pardo Bazan.

Abstract

The narrative voices in Los pazos de Ulloa (1886), La madre Naturaleza (1887), La Quimera (1905), and La sirena negra (1908) by Emilia Pardo Bazan were studied. The analysis revealed that the author primarily employed omniscient narration in Los pazos de Ulloa and La madre Naturaleza. She used the relatively new narrative techniques of free indirect style and interior monologue when she wished to present the innermost thoughts of the characters in these two naturalistic novels. Pardo Bazan continued using the narrative techniques of the two earlier novels in La Quimera. However, she employed first-person narration more frequently and extensively in La Quimera because she gave more emphasis to the interior world in her twentieth-century works. She became more interested in death and idealism related to religious conversion in La Quimera and La sirena negra and she focused on the psychology of the novels' characters. The protagonist is the sole narrator of La sirena negra, which is his autobiography. Pardo Bazan's deeper penetration into the psychology of the characters is a reflection of her satisfaction with the balance she found between the restrictions of the French naturalists and the freedom of the Russian novelists regarding psychological treatment of the characters.