244
PARTISAN REVIEW
material. She uses an admission of fabrication to suggest the real
independent existence of her characters, much in the manner of the
observed or recollected story, or the discovered manuscript conven–
tions. Parenthetical references to "off-stage" characters dotted through–
out the novel report on states of mind, whereabouts, or opinions in the
third person. Taken together, these interventions leave an ambiguous
impression that reinforces the sense of two discrete levels of discourse
that pervades the earlier novels.
In
The Waterfall,
Drabble divides the narrative almost equally
between the first and third person, albeit with Jane the center of both
voices. She presents her preoccupation in that instance as one of lies. As
Jane slips into the first person, she disavows the "lies" she had offered
in describing her actions and thoughts as if they belonged to another.
At one point, she refers to "that schizoid third person. " The problemat–
ical relationship between truth and fiction figures at the core of
The
Waterfall
but within a structure that equates fiction and life. Jane's
problem remains that of giving a truthful account of herself; her ability
to do so in the first person represents her healing as a woman. Her
consciousness and her story come together as the novel closes in such a
way that her truth becomes her ability simply to talk of her life-the
easy sequence of words contained within the consciousness of " I"
mirrors and confirms her growing ability to make love, take her
children to the zoo, cope with the outside world, live her life. That
appropriation of selfhood remains intimately linked to the words that
organize communication. Just as the choice of words-most critically
the
'T'~signal
the adoption of a point of view in the full recognition
that various points of view may ultimately be incompatible.
Encompassing
The Waterfall
in a critical description endows the
work with a veneer of unity that, in fact, it lacks. The split between
artistic.self-consciousness and female self-consciousness mars the work
as a whole.
In
my judgment its pretentiousness makes it the least
successful of Drabble's novels. Abstracting from its texture a descrip–
tion of its structure and purpose distorts the experience of reading it,
but nonetheless affords a revealing perspective on Drabble's technique.
The Waterfall
could have been written from a critical de cription of
itself. More than any of the other novels it exposes the dualism at the
heart of Drabble's work. The author's interventions in
The Realms of
Gold
would seem to reflect the same kind of problem in a different
mode.
Since
The Waterfall,
Drabble has avoided the first person singular.
Any " I" of the subsequent novels belongs to the author
qua
author.
The author reports on the feelings and intentions, the consciousness of
