Point of View

The Princess Diaries is told exclusively through Mia Thermopolis' first-person point of view. The author seeks to convince the reader that Mia, the fictional narrator and protagonist, is recording the events of the novel in diary form. As such, the text is written in a stream-of-consciousness style in an effort to mimic the diary format. Mia's character is a freshman in high school, and so the tone is often overly dramatic, as befitting a typical teenage girl. Perhaps the biggest flaw with the author's choice to use Mia's point of view is that an actual teenage girl does not write the novel. It is written by an adult woman attempting to realistically mimic the point of view of a high school freshman. In many places the author does succeed in creating a credible high school viewpoint. However, just as often the written text seems to be...