Point of View

The novel is told from the perspective of a third-person omniscient narrator and shifts characters often. The narrator delves deepest into the perspectives of the characters with the most remarkable transformations, like Adam, Mimi, Dr. Gray, and Adeline. Overall, the narrator enters the minds of all eight members of the Jane Austen Society, antagonists like Jack and Colin, and less important characters like Liberty. Jenner reflects Austen’s writing by using this point of view. The third-person omniscient narrator is necessary for the allowance of comments from the narrator itself. Although less witty than Austen’s narrator, this narrator creates dramatic irony to create tension between personal experience and external observation. The omniscient narrator knows things about the characters that they do not know nor can express about themselves.

The third-person omniscient narrator also allows Jenner to include subtle clues about the characters that reflect...