“I took from my waistcoat-pocket a pen-knife, opened it, grasped the poor beast by the throat, and deliberately cut one of its eyes from the socket!”
The cool and logical way the character tells the story, attempting to justify his actions and explain his situation, creates a feeling that would not be possible to create in any other narrative. Gilman uses 1st person narration in a very similar way in “The Yellow Wallpaper”, But instead of having the narrator reflecting on what has been, she uses the first person’s rationalising and contemplating to depict the slow slide into mental disarray. The style of diary-type writing is kept the same throughout, and although the quality never varies, the unease comes from the increasingly peculiar fascinations that are the topic of the journal (the wallpaper, for example);
From;
“The color is repellent, almost revolting; a smouldering unclean yellow…”
An innocent, if somewhat disapproving comment on the colour of the wallpaper, to such ravings as:
“The front pattern DOES move--and no wonder! The woman behind it shakes it!”
The reasoning becomes increasingly irrational and far fetched, compared to the cold logic from the narrator of “The Black Cat”.
The atmosphere and sense of unease is greatly affected by the ability to see into someone else’s mind. Using a 1st person narrative in this context only adds to the overall ominous and immoral feeling of witnessing such events, to be witnessing them at the hands of the criminals and victims. Poe uses it to create a more fearful yet explainable chain of events;
“I detail with awe, nothing more than an ordinary succession of very natural causes and effects.”
While Gilman eases the reader into a comfortable state of psychosis slowly, without even realising at first;
“But in the places where it isn't faded and where the sun is just so--I can see a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure, that seems to skulk about behind that silly and conspicuous front design”
.
But probably the main attraction of the use of the Fist person narrator is to exploit the basic voyeuristic tendencies present in human nature. In some situations a first person narrative will be taken with more sincerity than a 3rd, depending on the nature of the story. “The Yellow Wallpaper” is suited to this because of the very personal nature of the slow decay of sanity, something that could really only be described from the inside, looking out;
“I wonder if they all come out of that wall-paper as I did?”
“But I am securely fastened now by my well-hidden rope--you don't get me out in the road there!”
Gilman draws on personal experience for the writing of this story, so it would also be an apparent reason to write in the first person. Poe uses the urge to observe and explain to create a character that could only elucidate and justify his own actions in the first person;
“FOR the most wild, yet most homely narrative which I am about to pen, I neither expect nor solicit belief.”
Insists the narrator, intent on telling us anyway.
The voyeur comes into play as we are captivated by this person’s tale of woe and misfortune, told in many ways. To look into lives, minds and out through eyes of someone else but you is extremely tempting, even when only offered in writing. Both authors exploit this, but in different ways.
In these stories, Poe and Gilman have used The first person narrators to great effect. These particular stories are much more suited to the 1st person than the third, because they all require reasoning and self-justifications that a 3rd person narrator could not provide with the same sincerity. Two very different, but equally dark stories are both set off perfectly by their narrators.
