mniscience. Thus, while
maintaining the prerogative to enter at any moment the minds of one or
more of his characters, he may limit his observation of the others to
what was actually seen and heard of them by those of whose minds he is
omniscient. In such a case, although the author tells the story in the
third person, he virtually sees the story from the point of view of
a certain actor, or of certain actors, in it. The only phase of
this device which we need to examine is that wherein the novelist's
omniscience is limited to a single character.

This special point of view is employed with consummate art by Jane
Austen. In "Emma," for example, she portrays every intimate detail of
the heroine's thoughts and feelings, entering Emma's mind at will, or
looking at her from the outside with omniscient eyes. But in dealing
with the other characters, the author limits her own knowledge to what
Emma knew about them, and sees them consistently through the eyes of
the heroine. Hence the story, although written by Jane Austen in the
third person, is really seen by Emma Woodhouse and thought of in the
first. Similarly, in "Pride and Prejudice," Elizabeth Bennet is the
only character that the author permits herself to analyze at any
length: the others are seen objectively, merely as Elizabeth saw them.
The reader is made acquainted with every step in the heroine's gradual
change of feeling toward Mr. Darcy; but of the change in Darcy's
thoughts and feelings toward Elizabeth the reader is told nothing
until she herself discovers it.

Of course, in applying this device, it is possible for the author, at
certain points in the narrative, to shift his limited omniscience from
one of the characters to another. In such a case, although the story
is told throughout consistently in the third person, one scene may be
viewed from the standpoint of one of the characters, another from that
of another character, and so on.

Imagine for a moment two adjacent rooms with a single door between
them which is locked; and suppose a character alone in each of the
rooms,--each person thinking of the other. Now an author assuming
absolute omniscience could tell us what each of them was thinking at
the self-same moment: the locked door would not be a bar to him. But
an author telling the story from the attitude of limited omniscience
could tell us only what one of them was thinking, and would not be
able to see beyond the door. Whether or not he would f