Abstract: There is a longstanding association in scholarship on the novel between free indirect discourse (FID) and narrative fiction. This essay argues that we ought to attend to free indirect discourse in non-narrative forms as well. The author first introduces Paul Dawson's historicist argument about FID. Dawson contends that FID in eighteenth-century novels is uniquely associated with women characters, because it emerged as a response to conduct-book ideals of feminine modesty and modes of self-examination. The author then turns to Aphra Behn's Seneca Unmasqued (an English translation of La Rochefoucauld's Maximes ) as an example of a work that displays characteristics of FID but does not fit Dawson's mold. In her translation, Behn plays with maxims to reveal a woman's open secrets by unexpectedly folding a unique, feminine voice into impersonal, general statements. The goal of Behn's experiment is not, however, for the reader to know a fictional character by impossibly witnessing private moments of her unspoken self-examination. Rather, by blending perspectives in this non-narrative work, Behn projects a confident, public account of feminine erotic desire while also suggesting that it is difficult fully to know or capture in writing any individual woman's private truth.
Kelly Swartz (Thu,) studied this question.