3rd-personitis

Posted by The Mysterious H.C. on August 16, 1998 at 18:07:10:

In response to addressing somebody in the third person , written by Constanza on August 13, 1998 at 15:16:40

] Both Lord Orville and Mortimer Delvile sometimes talk to Evelina and Cecilia using the third person. Do you know if that form of address usual? or was it a novel-writing-speech device?

] Personally, I find it very annoying.

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Here's an AUSTEN-L posting of a while back:

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From: churchyh@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu
Date: Sat Jul 4 12:02:29 1998
To: austen-l@VM1.MCGILL.CA
Subject: Re: Indirect address

] From: Aysin Dedekorkut

] Mortimer Delvile says to Cecilia:

] "Though there, perhaps, as I had also the honor of first seeing Miss
] Beverley, I might be too happy to feel much difficulty in being
] pleased." (V.1 Book 2, Chapter 6)

] There are other examples of this indirect address in both Cecilia
] and Evelina (Remember how many times men talk to Evelina about
] herself using "Miss Anville"). Why is that? We don't see this kind
] of thing in Austen.

Here's sort of a semi-close approach --

[Mr. Knightley:] "I remember saying to myself, 'Even Emma, with all her partiality for Harriet, will think this a good match.'"

[Emma:] "I cannot help wondering at your knowing so little of Emma as to say any such thing."

-- Emma, Chapt. 7

In general, I don't think Jane Austen liked this device (especially not when someone uses _their own name_ in the third person):

"And I do not like a lover speaking in the 3rd person; it is too much like the formal part of Lord Orville, and I think it not natural. If _you_ think differently, however, you need not mind me."

-- Letter of Jane Austen to Anna Austen Lefroy, May/June 1814

--
"His name is Henry, a proof how unequally the gifts of fortune are bestowed."
-Jane Austen, 10/14/1813 || Henry Churchyard http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~churchh

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