ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the representation of speech in Jane Austen’s fiction, taking its cue from Anne Waldron Neumann’s landmark essay ‘Free Indirect Discourse in the Eighteenth-Century English Novel: Speakable or Unspeakable?’ in Michael Toolan’s edited collection Language, Text and Context (1992). The chapter follows Neumann in adopting a broad definition of free indirect discourse (FID), based on unattributed quotation, whether of the ‘words-and-phrases’ or ‘whole-sentence’ kind (1992, pp. 114-115). Building on Neumann’s ground-breaking observation that in the eighteenth-century novel FID can involve not just quotation of a character by the narrator, but also cases ‘when a character quotes another character without attribution’ (p. 116), the chapter examines conversational exchanges which suggest the presence of an overhearing, quoting character. The heroine of Emma (1816) in particular finds herself often being obliged to overhear conversations which involve her nemesis, Mrs Elton. Her increasing frustration is apparent from the way that these exchanges are represented. Neumann demonstrated that quotation was central to the eighteenth-century novel. This chapter extends and develops her argument by showing how it is used with remarkable subtlety in Austen’s mature style to suggest the complex relationships between characters in spoken exchanges, including those who hear but do not speak.
