◄Previous: 3.1 Marianne Dreams and Tom’s Midnight Garden

# 3.2 Direct and indirect speech

When the dialogue is presented with reporting clauses such as ‘shouted his uncle’ or ‘said Tom’, this is called direct speech. When dialogue is presented without reporting clauses, such as with Uncle Alan’s long speech and Tom’s single word reply, this is called free direct speech. With direct speech, we assume that the words in the speech marks are exactly the words that the character spoke and that the narrator is reporting them exactly.

Now read this extract from chapter 2 of Marianne Dreams and notice how the writing uses both dialogue (direct speech) and narration, giving the narrator more input and control:

#### Catherine Storr:

… she heard her mother come up the stairs, talking to someone. Marianne knew it must be the doctor.

‘Good,’ she thought. ‘Now he’ll say I can get up and go back to school. I’m frightfully bored with being here all the time.

But when the doctor had examined her, and asked all the usual sort of questions that doctors do ask, he didn’t say she could get up and go back to school. In fact he still looked rather grave.

‘Now, young lady,’ he said, ‘I don’t know if this is going to be good news or bad news, but I’m afraid you won’t be going back to school this term. You’ve got to stay in bed for at least another six weeks, possibly more. I’ll come and see you fairly often and I’ll tell you when you can get up, but until then, it’s bed all the time.’

Marianne stared at him. She had never imagined anything like this. The three weeks she had already spent in bed had seemed endless and the idea of another six weeks, perhaps more, was terrible. ‘But I must go back to school,’ she protested. ‘I’m acting in the school play at the end of term!’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Dr Burton. ‘But you can’t get up even for that.’

‘But six weeks is a terribly long time,’ said Marianne, ‘I can’t stay in bed for six weeks and not do anything.’

‘I’m afraid you’ve got to,’ Dr Burton said gravely. ‘If you don’t, you might make yourself ill in a way that would last the rest of your life, and we don’t want that to happen.’

‘I don’t care,’ Marianne said, nearly crying, ‘I’d rather be ill for the rest of my life than have to stay in bed any more now.’ She knew it was silly, and that she didn’t really mean it, but she was too upset to mind.

Chapter 2, pp. 15-16

In this last paragraph, the narrator reports on thoughts instead of speech. Direct speech can also be used to describe thought, when it occurs in quotation marks, such as when Tom imagines the letter that he will write to his brother:

To begin with, the narrator reports on Marianne’s thoughts. Direct speech can also be used to describe thought, when it occurs in quotation marks, such as when Marianne imagines what the doctor will say:

> ‘Good,’ she thought. ‘Now he’ll say I can get up and go back to school. I’m frightfully bored with being here all the time.

The words in the quotation marks represent Tom’s exact thoughts, word for word, and the reporting clause allows the narrator to separate out Tom’s thoughts from the narrative commentary on them.

Another way of presenting speech and thought is indirectly. In indirect speech, we cannot be entirely sure of what words the character thought or said, such as in this example:

> She had never imagined anything like this. The three weeks she had already spent in bed had seemed endless and the idea of another six weeks, perhaps more, was terrible.

Here, we know that we are reading about Marianne’s thoughts because we are told that ‘she had never imagined anything like this’, but we cannot be sure if what we are reading is word-for-word what Marianne was thinking. The narrator is explaining Marianne’s thoughts and feelings, but without restricting this to the exact words in her head. Consider this example, from later on in the extract:

> She knew it was silly, and that she didn’t really mean it, but she was too upset to mind.

Here we have a reporting clause ‘she knew’ but what follows may not be Marianne’s exact thoughts. It’s clear from what the narrator tells us that she is not thinking clearly, and is overwhelmed, so the narrator must give us their interpretation of her thoughts in order to better explain them to us. Indirect speech gives the narrator more control, therefore, and this can be useful when authors want to describe or explain the thoughts of child characters while using descriptive language the child may not have used themselves.

At this point in the novel, it becomes clear to the reader that Marianne’s tiredness from the earlier activity is actually a symptom of a more serious illness. This illness and the bed rest that Dr Burton recommends to deal with it leads to her spending more time both drawing and dreaming, and it is in the fantasy world of these dreams that her drawings come to life.

## Activity 7 Perspective in Tom’s Midnight Garden and Marianne Dreams

Allow about 10 minutes

One of the challenges for writers of fantasy is to persuade readers to suspend disbelief and accept that, within the terms of the constructed world, characters and events are believable. From what you’ve read of the novels so far, consider: how do the techniques we’ve looked at so far help the authors to draw the reader into their protagonist’s world? How do the authors portray this world from the child protagonist’s perspective? Make some notes and select short quotes from what you’ve read so far to support your points.

(A text entry box would appear here, but your browser does not support it.)

### Discussion

In Tom’s Midnight Garden, the narrator focuses very closely on Tom’s perspective (we know little of the thoughts and feelings of the Kitsons or Peter), and we need to see and feel through his eyes and sensibilities for the story to work. Characters and places are presented from his perspective: Peter as a valued playmate and Uncle Alan as morose and authoritarian. In what you’ve read in the activities so far, you may have thought that Tom is being annoyingly pedantic by interrupting his uncle to ask if staying in bed means he can’t go to the lavatory, but there is nothing in the narrator’s words that would indicate this. Despite Tom’s frustrating responses, when Uncle Alan loses his temper, this is described as ‘sudden’ because it is unexpected to Tom, even though you might have predicted that Tom’s answers would make him angry. The narrator calls him ‘poor Tom’, making it clear who we should be empathising with.

In the extracts of Marianne Dreams you’ve read so far, the narrator uses indirect speech to report on Marianne’s thoughts, in which Marianne’s words are reported with the narrator’s words. This mixing of the narrator’s voice with Marianne’s feelings strengthens the reader’s identification with her. Through this colouring, the reader accepts her experiences in the dreamworld as believable within the framework of Storr’s constructed world.

However, at times the narrator does give us information that does not come solely from Marianne’s perspective. In the opening chapter (some of which you read in Activity 4), the narrator helps us to understand Marianne’s feelings by using the pronoun ‘you’ to explain why ‘It is worse if you have had your first riding lesson and know that you ought to be hungry. But not to be able to eat your birthday lunch is worst of all’. Without this context, Marianne’s tears might strike us as a strange overreaction, making it harder for us to empathise with her.

The third-person narrators tell us the story closely from Tom and Marianne’s perspective, therefore, but this narration is also omniscient, and so can give us information and ideas that the protagonists do not know or are not concerned with.

Free indirect speech takes the mixing of the character with the narrator one step further. In free indirect speech, the thoughts or speech of the character is described indirectly, but without any reporting clauses that make it clear that it is the character’s thoughts rather than the narrator’s which are being reported on. This can have the effect of confusing the distinction between the character’s thoughts or words and the narrator’s commentary.

## Activity 8 Free indirect speech

Allow about 10 minutes

Continue reading Chapter 2 of Tom’s Midnight Garden, in which Tom is lying in bed listening to the clock strike thirteen. Most of this is written in free indirect speech. Which parts do you think represent Tom’s thoughts and what comes from the narrator instead?

#### Philippa Pearce:

And at last—One! The clock struck the present hour; but, as if to show its independence of mind, went on striking—Two! For once Tom was not amused by its striking the wrong hour: Three! Four! ‘It’s one o’clock,’ Tom whispered angrily over the edge of the bedclothes. ‘Why don’t you strike one o’clock, then, as the clocks would do at home?’ Instead: Five! Six! Even in his irritation, Tom could not stop counting; it had become a habit with him at night. Seven! Eight! …

Nine! Ten! ‘You are going it,’ thought Tom, but yawning in the midst of his unwilling admiration. Yes, and it hadn’t finished yet: Eleven! Twelve! ‘Fancy striking midnight twice in one night!’ jeered Tom, sleepily. Thirteen! proclaimed the clock, and then stopped striking.

Thirteen? Tom’s mind gave a jerk: had it really struck thirteen? Even mad old clocks never struck that. He must have imagined it. Had he not been falling asleep, or already sleeping? But no, awake or dozing, he had counted up to thirteen. He was sure of it.

He was uneasy in the knowledge that this happening made some difference to him: he could feel that in his bones. The stillness had become an expectant one; the house seemed to hold its breath; the darkness pressed up to him, pressing him with a question: Come on, Tom, the clock has struck thirteen—what are you going to do about it?

‘Nothing,’ said Tom aloud. And then, as an afterthought: ‘Don’t be silly!’

What could he do, anyway? He had to stay in bed, sleeping or trying to sleep, for ten whole hours, as near as might be, from nine o’clock at night to seven o’clock the next morning. That was what he had promised when his uncle had reasoned with him.

Uncle Alan had been so sure of his reasoning; and yet Tom now began to feel that there had been some flaw in it … Uncle Alan, without discussing the idea, had taken for granted that there were twenty-four hours in a day—twice twelve hours. But suppose, instead, there were twice thirteen? Then, from nine at night to seven in the morning—with the thirteenth hour somewhere between—was more than ten hours: it was eleven. He could be in bed for ten hours, and still have an hour to spare—an hour of freedom.

Chapter 2, pp. 10-11

### Discussion

You probably found this difficult, and there are no clear answers! One of the key features of free indirect speech is that it often becomes almost impossible to separate out the narrator from the character being narrated. The phrase ‘mad old clocks’ could be Tom’s words, whereas a phrase like ‘uneasy in the knowledge that this happening made some difference to him’ is unlikely to be the word-for-word thoughts of a child. Some of the questions (‘had it really struck thirteen?’ and ‘Had he not been falling asleep, or already sleeping?) seem more likely to come from Tom’s mind than the narrator’s, but they could also be questions the narrator is asking the reader.

What did you think the effect of this narration style is? Towards the end, you may have noticed that there is a sense that something magical is about to happen: when the narrator tells us that ‘the house seemed to hold its breath’ it could just be to Tom that this seemed the case, but because this is unclear, it’s possible that something more magical really is occurring, and this isn’t just Tom’s interpretation. When the narrator tells us that ‘the darkness pressed up to him’ this could be Tom’s thoughts, but it’s also possible that the narrator is describing literal fantastic events. The narrator even uses direct speech to describe what the darkness asks him, which gives the impression that this question is not merely something Tom is imagining. The result is that we not only get insight into what Tom is thinking and feeling, but the confusion between his thoughts and the more objective account from the narrator heightens the sense of magic. This isn’t just in Tom’s imagination: something incredible is about to happen!

Tom does of course use this extra hour of freedom to leave his bed, and discovers that the back door by the Grandfather clock no longer opens onto a tiny, walled-in courtyard but a huge and beautiful garden (the ‘midnight garden’ of the title). As both Tom’s Midnight Garden and Marianne Dreams continue, the lives of the protagonists are split between the mundane and restricted lives they lead during the day and the unsupervised (and sometimes dangerous) fantasy worlds of the midnight garden and Marianne’s dreams.

◄Contents►Next: 3.3 A text of its time?

OpenLearn - Approaching language, literature and childhood
Except for third party materials and otherwise, this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence, full copyright detail can be found in the acknowledgements section. Please see full copyright statement for details.