Rhetorical Functions of Multiple Narrators and Focalization Shifts in Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone

Abstract

Exploring the rhetorical functions of the multiple-narrator structure and constantly changing focalization in Wilkie Collins’s epistolary novel The Moonstone is the focus of this study. Key events with regard to the loss of the Indian diamond are narrated in a repetitive pattern, each time with a shift in perspective depending on who remains in the focal position. Genettian concepts of alternating internal/external focalization and multifarious functionalities of narrator(s) are embodied in The Moonstone, culminating in a prevailing sense of mystery, ambiguity as well as an equivocal state of reality as generic conventions, yet on an underlying level, they reflect the ambivalent engagement with imperialism in the novel. The witness-narrator, Gabriel Betteredge, is constantly involved in a number of extranarrative roles alongside his narrating function: the directing function, communication function, testimonial function and ideological function that help to establish a relationship with the implied reader. The multiple-narrator structure and the use of focalization shifts as well as various narrative and extranarrative functions as sources of power are the main features in the novel that expose its uncertainty in response to the idea of empire.