"The History of the World According to Whom?"
VCU Graduate Critical Essay Award
by gayla mills
Penelope Lively employs unconventional narrative techniques in her seventh novel Moon Tiger to illustrate how so-called historical events shift in meaning and interpretation depending on the storyteller. Although several critics have noted these techniques, no one to date has considered them in detail. Yet a close examination suggests that Lively's narration is internally inconsistent and that she is not as successful playing around with narrative authority as it may first appear.
Lively scholars seem to take for granted who is telling the story: multiple narrators, including different characters revealing their own perspectives on a given event. In Penelope Lively, the most extensive examination of Lively's works thus far, Mary Hurley Moran addresses how kaleidoscopic narration is used in Moon Tiger to "undermine the convention of positing narrative authority and thereby drawing our attention to the fact that there is no final truth about anyone or anything" (Moran 120). More specifically, Moran assumes that the different perspectives seemingly presented by the various characters are, in fact, their true voices:
We find ourselves assuming that Claudia's point of view is authoritative. But then we are jolted out of this assumption when the narrative shifts again, from first-person memory to kaleidoscopic flashback, and we witness the way other characters experienced the episode Claudia has just recalled: the discrepancies between their interpretations and Claudia's undermine her authority. This is particularly true of flashbacks involving characters who are very different from Claudia, such as Lisa and Sylvia. The cutaways to their consciousness reveal that these women are far more sensitive and aware than Claudia, who is dismissive and contemptuous of conventional people, realizes. (120) Raschke is not as explicit as Moran in assuming multiple narrators, but we can infer that she assumes it. "No one point of view dominates Moon Tiger. There are many voices and many layers" (Raschke 124). She is more interested than Moran in examining what these different voices tell us about Claudia as a female character:
...the reader in this text is split between a multitude of perspectives and voices and between a multitude of Claudias. There is Claudia the adventurer, Claudia the lover, and Claudia the scaler of rocks, wars, and prodigious historical figures. There is Claudia the refuser of the mother-woman, who sees "children as beings apart" and who does not hear her child's plea. There is Lisa's view of Claudia: the Claudia who "has never seen Lisa detached from Claudia," the flawed storyteller who sometimes gets "simple basic things" wrong; there is the Claudia who is always the heroine of Tom Southern's stories; there is the Claudia lying in the nursing home, still mentally keen, but needing the nurse to prop her up. (125)
Yet there is another plausible interpretation of Moon Tiger which Lively's critics don't examine: that all the various perspectives are, in fact, imagined and told by Claudia alone. Let us consider, then, the text from two viewpoints (multiple characters' and exclusively Claudia's), determine which seems more coherent, and from there interpret what Lively may have intended.
Let's begin where the text most strongly suggests that Claudia is the only true narrator. Claudia sets the stage in the first chapter by saying that she is writing a history of the world, and we discover as the novel unfolds that the novel itself can be viewed as that history. Under this scenario, all the voices are told through Claudia, the author of the history. As she states:
The voice of history is composite. Many voices; all the voices that have managed to get themselves heard. Some louder than others, naturally. My story is tangled with the stories of others - Mother, Gordon, Jasper, Lisa, and one other person above all; their voices must be heard also, thus shall I abide by the conventions of history…So, since my story is also theirs, they too must speak--Mother, Gordon, Jasper… Except that of course I have the last word. The historian's privilege. (5-6)
This passage, placed significantly at the very beginning of the book, certainly suggests that their voices are being told by Claudia, the historian who determines what the history must include. In fact, it is hard to know how else to interpret this. Who would be writing this story, if not Claudia? If all the characters are speaking, how does Claudia's notion that this is a history, her history, allow for others to actually speak? It is far more credible to assume that, like any good researcher, she has used the available information she has from her own experience to reconstruct her best approximation of what these other characters might have felt or thought. It is only by looking at those passages more closely that we will be able to decide if she could have written them. But let us first consider a different question.
Is Claudia a character capable of imagining the viewpoints of others? She presents herself, after all, as egocentric and opinionated. One might assume from this that Claudia simply isn't able to imagine, or even be interested in, how others think.
Yet there is plenty to suggest otherwise. For one, Claudia is a journalist and an historian, two occupations that require flexibility in one's thinking (at least for the sort that she practices). Claudia must be able to consider context, motive, and nuance in order to write good articles and stories. We know that she savors a good argument and, judging from the ongoing engagement of her sparring partners Jasper and Gordon over the years, is probably good at it. Yet the skill of arguing well requires clear thinking, intelligence, and the ability to consider matters from multiple perspectives. All of these characteristics suggest that Claudia is capable of imagining, even if sometimes imperfectly, how others think. Certainly the details she provides for her own versions of history are vivid, credible, and three-dimensional:
In my history of the world the fall of Tezcuco will be differently seen. Or perhaps not seen but heard…They shall hear the tramping of Cortez's long march to the interior, the rain, the wind, the swearing and the grumbling, they shall hear the awful hiss of Popocatepetl into whose smoking maw the Spaniards descend…They shall hear Montezuma's welcome to Cortez, and Cortez's affirmation of friendship and respect. They shall hear the clink and clatter of the gold and silver gifts heaped upon the Spaniards - the collars and necklaces and bracelets and other ornaments, the drinking vessels and platters. They shall hear the interested comments of the Spaniards upon the workmanship, the weight, the probable value. (158)
Knowing Claudia is imaginative is not enough, but fortunately we have more to work with than that. In a flashback to Egypt during the war, the voice is Claudia's (68). She has entered a club and observed the scene. The narration switches to interior dialogue for a while: "This is medieval, she thinks - why did I never think of that before?… And over there if I am not mistaken is this chap who might wangle me a ride up to the front if I play it right" (69). Slipping back to exterior dialogue, "he rises, pulls out a chair, clicks his fingers at the suffragi. And looks appreciatively at the legs, the hair, the outfit which is not the get-up of the average woman press correspondent." After a section break, the text immediately continues: "At least it is assumed that that is what he was doing since he tried later to get me into bed." The first passage began with Claudia's voice and the second continued it, yet we have a brief glimpse into the mind of the admiring pilot. He not only does something observable (looking appreciatively) but also makes a judgement (she is not dressed like a press correspondent.) Claudia makes clear in the next sentence that this is merely her conjecture, based on his later behavior. She explicitly lets us know that she is the one who has attempted reconstructing his thoughts (and, she implies, has conjectured about them with the possibility of error). So we know that she is capable of and interested in making conjectures about what others think.
She reveals this trait in other passages as well. Claudia's relationship to Sylvia is more complex than she first represents it, as is made evident when Sylvia gives Claudia a poinsettia in her hospital room. Claudia states that, if the plant died, "She'd accuse me of slaughtering it. To herself, of course--not out loud. I have heard many of Sylvia's silent accusations, over the years" (100). One might wonder how many other silent accusations, arguments, judgements, and speculations Claudia is able to hear from the thoughts of others. It is easy to see how passages seemingly presented by other characters in the book could be merely Claudia's speculations about their thinking.
Yet what would be her motivation to write from these other perspectives, especially considering that much of what is said is unflattering? For the same reason that she wants to write about Cortez and Montezuma: "Like everything else: it enlarges me, it frees me from the prison of my experience; it also resounds within that experience" (159). And this is, in fact, one of the effects of the technique: by approaching the same event from the perspective of different characters, it enlivens that moment and it gives it greater significance; the actions resonate, like sounds that linger in the air after a string is plucked. In this way, Claudia's own history and the ways in which she is connected to others are expanded and made more significant.
Claudia may have another motive as well: the desire to have the final word on how she lives on. History is, after all, what it written. As Claudia lies on her death bed, she ponders where she is going and what will survive.
I shall survive--appallingly misrepresented--in Lisa's head and in Sylvia's and in Jasper's and in the heads of my grandsons (if there is room alongside football players and pop stars) and the heads of mine enemies. As a historian, I know only too well that there is nothing I can do about the depth and extent of the misrepresentation, so I don't care. (125)
Or does she? Her history, in which "I shall use many voices" (8) is certainly one way for her to shape how she is perceived after death. By writing down her version of what's in their heads, she can, in her own minor way, shape their "appalling misrepresentations" into some more manageable - and preserved - form.
So - we know that Claudia said she wants to write a history of the world that includes the voices of her family and friends, and that the novel seems to be that history; we know that Claudia is able to imagine the viewpoints of others, and is interested in different perspectives; and we know that she appears motivated to relate the account of her experiences by bringing in, and shaping, multiple versions of those experiences. Let us now examine some of the passages told by others and see what they reveal.
Jasper's voice seems to be the most superficial and the easiest to imagine Claudia reconstructing. When Claudia tells him (once again) that she doesn't wish to see him, he is annoyed:
Jasper feels himself aflame with irritation. He looks down at her; she has turned from handsome entertaining Claudia to maddeningly intractable Claudia. It does not suit him, just now, to do without her; at another time, it might. (170)
This passage is similar to the others seemingly told from Jasper's viewpoint (11, 48, and 146). In each case, it is not merely that we can imagine Claudia speaking his voice--the passages present Jasper in a light that he probably would not portray himself. He is always shown as egocentric, selfish, and superficially motivated. There is a decided feminist undertone in how he views and takes advantage of Claudia, a tone far more understandable when read as Claudia's attempts to (unsympathetically) understand him. Jasper would have done a much better job of portraying himself favorably.
Gordon's voice is quite similar to Claudia's, which supports her contention that he is her alter ego. When he speaks, it sometimes sounds like the voice of Claudia's doubts: "You always did have dubious taste in men" (18). "You were pushing it a bit, weren't you?" (38) At others, Gordon's voice mirrors her obsession with him. Claudia thinks, "He is the same and not the same, this is the face she knows better than any face but it is also the face of a stranger." And Gordon counters "She smells foreign and expensive, but beneath the Chanel or whatever it is there is a whiff--a rich emotive whiff--of unreachable moments" (135). Similarly, Claudia's voice says, "I love you, she thinks. Always have. More than I've loved anyone, bar one. You have been my alter ego, and I have been yours. And soon there will be only me, and I shall not know what to do." Gordon's voice responds with "You, he thinks. You. There has always been you. And soon no longer will be" (186). The two as adults think the same kinds of thoughts, which may be interpreted in one of two ways: either they truly do both feel the same, or else Claudia is so close to Gordon that she imagines that they do. Both interpretations seem plausible.
There is one Gordon passage that is not easily attributed to Claudia. While Claudia lies in her hospital bed recovering from her accident, Gordon walks over to the window and notes the view: "He goes to the window and sees a boulevard with oleander trees, a crowd of people piling into a gaudy yellow bus, posters advertising cigars and washing powders" (164). Is Gordon privy to a view that Claudia can't see, thus suggesting that it truly is Gordon's voice? Can Claudia see the view from her bed? Is she imagining what the view might be like? If the latter, then why the elaborate description? This passage is most plausibly interpreted as being from Gordon's, not Claudia's, perspective.
The first of Sylvia's passages (the others appear on 141 and 184) is the most problematic. For the most part, when Sylvia is describing her trials and tribulations on an outing with Gordon and Claudia, it is easier to imagine the passage as Claudia's unsympathetic rendering. It would require an unusual degree of unfavorable self-reflection for someone to say of herself, "And already she is compelled to make her presence felt, leaning uncomfortably forward…"(33) or "Sylvia, puffing a little, squeezes herself into the back of the compact…"(32) or "(Sylvia) inquires, plaintively…"(34) People who impose themselves on others seem unaware of it; puffers seem not to notice their puffing; whiners do not describe their queries as "plaintive." The language suggests that it is not Sylvia who is actually doing the narrating.
Yet there are so-called facts presented which Claudia would not credibly know. The passage mentions Gordon's affair with an Indian statistician, which apparently ended quietly without incident. How would Claudia know of this? Sylvia wouldn't have told her. Would Gordon? The only place in the book where Gordon discusses other women with Claudia is a veiled and reluctant reference to an American pre-Sylvia. He seems to protect Claudia from his relations with other women, so it is suspect that she would know about the Indian statistician. The reference to the affair sounds like Sylvia, yet much of the language seems to come from Claudia, making it difficult to determine either as the exclusive narrator.
The waters are muddied further with Lisa's passages. Lisa's perspectives as both a child and an adult are the most complex and varied of all the secondary characters, and the most difficult to interpret (45,48,52,55,59,123,170). Her child's mind flits illogically from one uninformed observation to another, colored by superstition and fear and childish delight in a shadow world. The language of these passages reflects this perspective, rushing and flitting: 'The trees beside the road went past the car sha-sha-sha-sha and the hedges slid about and then there was the beach and the sea rushing at you, too wet too deep too rough" (46). Lisa's perceptions seem too alien to have been written by Claudia or any other adult: she imagines the pupils of her mother's eyes as full of fierce biting animals (45); thinks that scattering buttercups on Rex's back is spreading butter to make a dog sandwich (46); sees Claudia's pink fingernails as sugar mice (52). These passages feel like they are Lisa's.
And yet, immediately after the first appearance of Lisa-as-child, Claudia follows with a first person assessment of it. (Her first person voice seems the clearest and most dependable of any of the passages--it is the one we can feel the most confident is Claudia's voice.) "That Lisa--that Lisa fettered by ignorance but also freed by it--is as dead as ammonites and belemnites, as the figures in Victorian photographs, as the Plymouth settlers" (46).
Now this is quite odd. Why exactly does Claudia pop up here with this remark? One way or another, she seems privy to the fact that the previous passage concerned Lisa as a child and that it revealed her being "fettered by ignorance." The most coherent explanation is that Claudia is the narrator, Claudia is the one retelling Lisa's story, one which took place years ago. And after relating the incident from the view she imagines as Lisa's, she then inserts herself to the fore of the narrative, following her train of thought from Lisa as child to Lisa as adult. So it seems most plausible that Claudia wrote Lisa as she imagined her.
Yet there are several "facts" that Lisa mentions that Claudia probably did not or could not know. Lisa details the contents of her grandmother's dressing table (53) and mentions a conversation between Granny Branscombe and herself in the garden (171). As an adult she thinks about an affair hidden from Claudia and of other things:
And because since I was a small child I have hidden things from you: a silver button found on a path, a lipstick pilfered from your bag, thoughts, feelings, opinions, intentions, my lover. (56)
So we are bounced back to the impression that this must be the real Lisa speaking after all. Or so, now, it seems.
Many readers will find the last paragraph of the novel to be the most problematic as we search for a narrator. A conventional reading would suggest that Claudia has died, and a third person omniscient narrator is describing the room after her death. "And within the room a change has taken place. It is empty. Void" (208). Under this reading, the final paragraph emphasizes the finality of her death and the way in which history--cars, planes, and the six o'clock news--moves on without her. There are no mourners in the room, no characters to weep and keep her alive in their heads. There is a finality to her end.
And if we take this passage as spoken by an omniscient narrator, then we must accept that other passages may be written that way as well. But which ones? The final paragraph makes us question all the preceding ones.
If we are to read the novel as written exclusively from Claudia's perspective, how can we account for this last scene? It could be Claudia imagining her own death. She pictures what the world would be like without her--in her small world, the world in which she is central, everything changes. Prior to her death, the room is filled with light and beauty:
The bare criss-crossing branches of the tree are hung with drops and as the sun comes out it catches the drops and they flash with colour--blue, yellow, green, and pink... Claudia gazes at this; it is as though the spectacle has been laid on for her pleasure and she is filled with elation, a surge of joy, of well-being, of wonder. (207)
But then she imagines the room without her, when she can no longer witness the spectacle. The room darkens, becomes still and empty. It is no longer bright with color and light. There is an implied sadness about the lifelessness in the room. Claudia was always bright and lively. Her color was red. In visualizing her own absence, she sees that color gone. But ever the historian, she also knows that history marches on. The six o'clock news continues.
It is not hard to believe that a dying woman would try to picture the effect of her death on the world around her. Most of us do the same. But Lively doesn't give us enough clues to know definitely how to read the text--both interpretations hold.
Before deciding whom our narrator is, let us consider its importance to understanding several passages, beginning with Lisa.
The other Lisa, the Lisa unknown to Claudia, is positive while not assertive, is prettier, sharper, a good cook, a competent mother, an adequate if not exemplary wife. She knows now that she married too young too quickly the wrong man, but has found ways to make the best of the situation…Eventually, one day, when the boys are older, Lisa and her lover may marry, if she can persuade herself that Harry would be all right. (60)
If this is Lisa's viewpoint, then Lisa appears as more accomplished and self-aware than Claudia believes; Claudia seems self-absorbed and inadequate as a mother, since she so grossly misreads her daughter; and Lisa appears ready to reject her whole life with her husband. Yet if this is Claudia writing, the meaning behind the passage is flipped: Claudia then hopes that Lisa has secrets from her, is having an affair, is more capable than she seems, is planning on changing her life. It may be that Lisa never did realize she married too young, didn't have an affair, has no plans to leave Harry, and isn't really prettier and sharper--merely that Claudia wishes these things were so. And since Lively isn't giving us a good basis for choosing between these two scenarios, we are left with the possibility of not knowing whether a or not a is true.
The book is sprinkled with these passages, where the meaning of the text can vary from subtle variation to direct contradiction depending on whom is telling the story. The greatest impact, however, is on how we view the characters themselves. How sophisticated are they, how self-aware, how generous in their assessment of others? Claudia, in particular, is a very different character if she did, in fact, narrate the entire book. She is observant enough to imagine the articles on her mother's bedside table, imaginative enough to see the world from a child's view, bright enough to consider the perceptions and motives of others. For those readers who would like to know what these characters are really like and what really happened, they will find the search for a clear narrator an exercise in creative frustration.
For Lively has left too many contradictions and clues to decide definitively. There are too many passages which argue for the view that Claudia is the only one who could coherently be narrating--and yet, there are also too many "facts" which other characters allude to which she could not credibly know. This leaves us with three possible interpretations.
The first is that Claudia is the only narrator, and that in her reconstruction of other characters, she sometimes makes up or imagines certain details to lend texture to the narrative--that her book more closely resembles creative non-fiction than it does "traditional" history. (For example, a historian would not imagine Lisa might have a lover and give him a name.)
The second is that there are multiple narrators including Claudia as an omniscient one. This would explain how other characters are able to speak, but also how Claudia is able to comment on their passages (see above page 9). This approach would certainly be imaginative, but not very credible. When is the novel told, and by whom? It first seems to take place after Claudia is hospitalized, and that everything preceding her hospitalization is a flashback. But if she is commenting on the flashbacks of other characters, how does she accomplish this? Are their views written on a page which she reads, knowing her remarks will follow? Does she somehow compile these passages? It is hard to know how a character could know these things without having godlike powers.
The third possibility is that Lively isn't attempting to present a narrative that can "make sense" logically--that the pieces when viewed next to each other are not coherent. This would explain how the same passage has a tone, for example, that Sylvia could not write, but includes facts that only she could know. Whether this is intentional (brilliant experimentation) or accidental (inadvertent error) is hard to say. But it would mean that Lively has broken the understood laws that there must be consistency in who the narrator of a given passage is and in how they know what they know.
There doesn't seem to be a clear way to choose among these three alternative readings, and that may be Lively's intent. I find the first possibility the easiest to swallow, because it requires the least bending of the rules while operating under the assumption that Lively knows what she is doing. The problem with feeling satisfied with the novel is that none of these three options seems wholly convincing or credible, leaving the reader with the feeling that Lively is playing a bit fast and loose with her narrators.
What is clear is that Lively plays with perspective to tease and tantalize the reader into thinking about history differently. The view that the telling of history varies depending upon the historian telling it has become a trite one, yet Lively chooses to make this point in a compelling way. She examines a given moment from the viewpoint of several characters, or at least from Claudia's best guess at what these characters might think, in order to produce a multifaceted description of the moment. She attacks traditional history in other ways as well, rejecting a linear narrative and a separation of public from private events.
We must not confuse narrator Claudia's views with Lively the trained historian's views, however. Lively herself has said that she would not write such a subjective or iconoclastic history as Claudia attempted, for Claudia the character was influenced by the conservative nature of professional historians of her time (Moran, PL, 159). Yet by the time Lively wrote Moon Tiger, historical methods had evolved, taking into account relativistic perspectives and incorporating the personal lives of individuals, both famous and ordinary. So Claudia's views of how history is written were already outdated by several decades by the time of Lively's writing. That doesn't undermine the interest of the novel or its enjoyment for readers, but does indicate why the ideas presented don't seem particularly novel or fresh. Lively combines experimental use of kaleidoscopic flashbacks and non-linear narration with a compelling cast of characters to gradually unfold a unique history of the world and of Claudia. She tells an engaging story in an intriguing way. Under close examination, however, one cannot convincingly make coherent a narrative viewpoint in the novel, which leads to an unsatisfying feeling that Lively didn't quite pull off the experiment she intended.
Bibliography
Moran, Mary Hurley. Penelope Lively. New York: Twayne, 1993
Moran, Mary Hurley. "Penelope Lively's Moon Tiger: A Feminist 'History of the World.'" Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 11, no.2-3 (1990): 89-95
Raschke, Debrah. "Penelope Lively's Moon Tiger: Re-envisioning a 'History of the World.'" Ariel: A Review of International English Literature, 26:4, October 1995: 115-132
Lively scholars seem to take for granted who is telling the story: multiple narrators, including different characters revealing their own perspectives on a given event. In Penelope Lively, the most extensive examination of Lively's works thus far, Mary Hurley Moran addresses how kaleidoscopic narration is used in Moon Tiger to "undermine the convention of positing narrative authority and thereby drawing our attention to the fact that there is no final truth about anyone or anything" (Moran 120). More specifically, Moran assumes that the different perspectives seemingly presented by the various characters are, in fact, their true voices:
We find ourselves assuming that Claudia's point of view is authoritative. But then we are jolted out of this assumption when the narrative shifts again, from first-person memory to kaleidoscopic flashback, and we witness the way other characters experienced the episode Claudia has just recalled: the discrepancies between their interpretations and Claudia's undermine her authority. This is particularly true of flashbacks involving characters who are very different from Claudia, such as Lisa and Sylvia. The cutaways to their consciousness reveal that these women are far more sensitive and aware than Claudia, who is dismissive and contemptuous of conventional people, realizes. (120) Raschke is not as explicit as Moran in assuming multiple narrators, but we can infer that she assumes it. "No one point of view dominates Moon Tiger. There are many voices and many layers" (Raschke 124). She is more interested than Moran in examining what these different voices tell us about Claudia as a female character:
...the reader in this text is split between a multitude of perspectives and voices and between a multitude of Claudias. There is Claudia the adventurer, Claudia the lover, and Claudia the scaler of rocks, wars, and prodigious historical figures. There is Claudia the refuser of the mother-woman, who sees "children as beings apart" and who does not hear her child's plea. There is Lisa's view of Claudia: the Claudia who "has never seen Lisa detached from Claudia," the flawed storyteller who sometimes gets "simple basic things" wrong; there is the Claudia who is always the heroine of Tom Southern's stories; there is the Claudia lying in the nursing home, still mentally keen, but needing the nurse to prop her up. (125)
Yet there is another plausible interpretation of Moon Tiger which Lively's critics don't examine: that all the various perspectives are, in fact, imagined and told by Claudia alone. Let us consider, then, the text from two viewpoints (multiple characters' and exclusively Claudia's), determine which seems more coherent, and from there interpret what Lively may have intended.
Let's begin where the text most strongly suggests that Claudia is the only true narrator. Claudia sets the stage in the first chapter by saying that she is writing a history of the world, and we discover as the novel unfolds that the novel itself can be viewed as that history. Under this scenario, all the voices are told through Claudia, the author of the history. As she states:
The voice of history is composite. Many voices; all the voices that have managed to get themselves heard. Some louder than others, naturally. My story is tangled with the stories of others - Mother, Gordon, Jasper, Lisa, and one other person above all; their voices must be heard also, thus shall I abide by the conventions of history…So, since my story is also theirs, they too must speak--Mother, Gordon, Jasper… Except that of course I have the last word. The historian's privilege. (5-6)
This passage, placed significantly at the very beginning of the book, certainly suggests that their voices are being told by Claudia, the historian who determines what the history must include. In fact, it is hard to know how else to interpret this. Who would be writing this story, if not Claudia? If all the characters are speaking, how does Claudia's notion that this is a history, her history, allow for others to actually speak? It is far more credible to assume that, like any good researcher, she has used the available information she has from her own experience to reconstruct her best approximation of what these other characters might have felt or thought. It is only by looking at those passages more closely that we will be able to decide if she could have written them. But let us first consider a different question.
Is Claudia a character capable of imagining the viewpoints of others? She presents herself, after all, as egocentric and opinionated. One might assume from this that Claudia simply isn't able to imagine, or even be interested in, how others think.
Yet there is plenty to suggest otherwise. For one, Claudia is a journalist and an historian, two occupations that require flexibility in one's thinking (at least for the sort that she practices). Claudia must be able to consider context, motive, and nuance in order to write good articles and stories. We know that she savors a good argument and, judging from the ongoing engagement of her sparring partners Jasper and Gordon over the years, is probably good at it. Yet the skill of arguing well requires clear thinking, intelligence, and the ability to consider matters from multiple perspectives. All of these characteristics suggest that Claudia is capable of imagining, even if sometimes imperfectly, how others think. Certainly the details she provides for her own versions of history are vivid, credible, and three-dimensional:
In my history of the world the fall of Tezcuco will be differently seen. Or perhaps not seen but heard…They shall hear the tramping of Cortez's long march to the interior, the rain, the wind, the swearing and the grumbling, they shall hear the awful hiss of Popocatepetl into whose smoking maw the Spaniards descend…They shall hear Montezuma's welcome to Cortez, and Cortez's affirmation of friendship and respect. They shall hear the clink and clatter of the gold and silver gifts heaped upon the Spaniards - the collars and necklaces and bracelets and other ornaments, the drinking vessels and platters. They shall hear the interested comments of the Spaniards upon the workmanship, the weight, the probable value. (158)
Knowing Claudia is imaginative is not enough, but fortunately we have more to work with than that. In a flashback to Egypt during the war, the voice is Claudia's (68). She has entered a club and observed the scene. The narration switches to interior dialogue for a while: "This is medieval, she thinks - why did I never think of that before?… And over there if I am not mistaken is this chap who might wangle me a ride up to the front if I play it right" (69). Slipping back to exterior dialogue, "he rises, pulls out a chair, clicks his fingers at the suffragi. And looks appreciatively at the legs, the hair, the outfit which is not the get-up of the average woman press correspondent." After a section break, the text immediately continues: "At least it is assumed that that is what he was doing since he tried later to get me into bed." The first passage began with Claudia's voice and the second continued it, yet we have a brief glimpse into the mind of the admiring pilot. He not only does something observable (looking appreciatively) but also makes a judgement (she is not dressed like a press correspondent.) Claudia makes clear in the next sentence that this is merely her conjecture, based on his later behavior. She explicitly lets us know that she is the one who has attempted reconstructing his thoughts (and, she implies, has conjectured about them with the possibility of error). So we know that she is capable of and interested in making conjectures about what others think.
She reveals this trait in other passages as well. Claudia's relationship to Sylvia is more complex than she first represents it, as is made evident when Sylvia gives Claudia a poinsettia in her hospital room. Claudia states that, if the plant died, "She'd accuse me of slaughtering it. To herself, of course--not out loud. I have heard many of Sylvia's silent accusations, over the years" (100). One might wonder how many other silent accusations, arguments, judgements, and speculations Claudia is able to hear from the thoughts of others. It is easy to see how passages seemingly presented by other characters in the book could be merely Claudia's speculations about their thinking.
Yet what would be her motivation to write from these other perspectives, especially considering that much of what is said is unflattering? For the same reason that she wants to write about Cortez and Montezuma: "Like everything else: it enlarges me, it frees me from the prison of my experience; it also resounds within that experience" (159). And this is, in fact, one of the effects of the technique: by approaching the same event from the perspective of different characters, it enlivens that moment and it gives it greater significance; the actions resonate, like sounds that linger in the air after a string is plucked. In this way, Claudia's own history and the ways in which she is connected to others are expanded and made more significant.
Claudia may have another motive as well: the desire to have the final word on how she lives on. History is, after all, what it written. As Claudia lies on her death bed, she ponders where she is going and what will survive.
I shall survive--appallingly misrepresented--in Lisa's head and in Sylvia's and in Jasper's and in the heads of my grandsons (if there is room alongside football players and pop stars) and the heads of mine enemies. As a historian, I know only too well that there is nothing I can do about the depth and extent of the misrepresentation, so I don't care. (125)
Or does she? Her history, in which "I shall use many voices" (8) is certainly one way for her to shape how she is perceived after death. By writing down her version of what's in their heads, she can, in her own minor way, shape their "appalling misrepresentations" into some more manageable - and preserved - form.
So - we know that Claudia said she wants to write a history of the world that includes the voices of her family and friends, and that the novel seems to be that history; we know that Claudia is able to imagine the viewpoints of others, and is interested in different perspectives; and we know that she appears motivated to relate the account of her experiences by bringing in, and shaping, multiple versions of those experiences. Let us now examine some of the passages told by others and see what they reveal.
Jasper's voice seems to be the most superficial and the easiest to imagine Claudia reconstructing. When Claudia tells him (once again) that she doesn't wish to see him, he is annoyed:
Jasper feels himself aflame with irritation. He looks down at her; she has turned from handsome entertaining Claudia to maddeningly intractable Claudia. It does not suit him, just now, to do without her; at another time, it might. (170)
This passage is similar to the others seemingly told from Jasper's viewpoint (11, 48, and 146). In each case, it is not merely that we can imagine Claudia speaking his voice--the passages present Jasper in a light that he probably would not portray himself. He is always shown as egocentric, selfish, and superficially motivated. There is a decided feminist undertone in how he views and takes advantage of Claudia, a tone far more understandable when read as Claudia's attempts to (unsympathetically) understand him. Jasper would have done a much better job of portraying himself favorably.
Gordon's voice is quite similar to Claudia's, which supports her contention that he is her alter ego. When he speaks, it sometimes sounds like the voice of Claudia's doubts: "You always did have dubious taste in men" (18). "You were pushing it a bit, weren't you?" (38) At others, Gordon's voice mirrors her obsession with him. Claudia thinks, "He is the same and not the same, this is the face she knows better than any face but it is also the face of a stranger." And Gordon counters "She smells foreign and expensive, but beneath the Chanel or whatever it is there is a whiff--a rich emotive whiff--of unreachable moments" (135). Similarly, Claudia's voice says, "I love you, she thinks. Always have. More than I've loved anyone, bar one. You have been my alter ego, and I have been yours. And soon there will be only me, and I shall not know what to do." Gordon's voice responds with "You, he thinks. You. There has always been you. And soon no longer will be" (186). The two as adults think the same kinds of thoughts, which may be interpreted in one of two ways: either they truly do both feel the same, or else Claudia is so close to Gordon that she imagines that they do. Both interpretations seem plausible.
There is one Gordon passage that is not easily attributed to Claudia. While Claudia lies in her hospital bed recovering from her accident, Gordon walks over to the window and notes the view: "He goes to the window and sees a boulevard with oleander trees, a crowd of people piling into a gaudy yellow bus, posters advertising cigars and washing powders" (164). Is Gordon privy to a view that Claudia can't see, thus suggesting that it truly is Gordon's voice? Can Claudia see the view from her bed? Is she imagining what the view might be like? If the latter, then why the elaborate description? This passage is most plausibly interpreted as being from Gordon's, not Claudia's, perspective.
The first of Sylvia's passages (the others appear on 141 and 184) is the most problematic. For the most part, when Sylvia is describing her trials and tribulations on an outing with Gordon and Claudia, it is easier to imagine the passage as Claudia's unsympathetic rendering. It would require an unusual degree of unfavorable self-reflection for someone to say of herself, "And already she is compelled to make her presence felt, leaning uncomfortably forward…"(33) or "Sylvia, puffing a little, squeezes herself into the back of the compact…"(32) or "(Sylvia) inquires, plaintively…"(34) People who impose themselves on others seem unaware of it; puffers seem not to notice their puffing; whiners do not describe their queries as "plaintive." The language suggests that it is not Sylvia who is actually doing the narrating.
Yet there are so-called facts presented which Claudia would not credibly know. The passage mentions Gordon's affair with an Indian statistician, which apparently ended quietly without incident. How would Claudia know of this? Sylvia wouldn't have told her. Would Gordon? The only place in the book where Gordon discusses other women with Claudia is a veiled and reluctant reference to an American pre-Sylvia. He seems to protect Claudia from his relations with other women, so it is suspect that she would know about the Indian statistician. The reference to the affair sounds like Sylvia, yet much of the language seems to come from Claudia, making it difficult to determine either as the exclusive narrator.
The waters are muddied further with Lisa's passages. Lisa's perspectives as both a child and an adult are the most complex and varied of all the secondary characters, and the most difficult to interpret (45,48,52,55,59,123,170). Her child's mind flits illogically from one uninformed observation to another, colored by superstition and fear and childish delight in a shadow world. The language of these passages reflects this perspective, rushing and flitting: 'The trees beside the road went past the car sha-sha-sha-sha and the hedges slid about and then there was the beach and the sea rushing at you, too wet too deep too rough" (46). Lisa's perceptions seem too alien to have been written by Claudia or any other adult: she imagines the pupils of her mother's eyes as full of fierce biting animals (45); thinks that scattering buttercups on Rex's back is spreading butter to make a dog sandwich (46); sees Claudia's pink fingernails as sugar mice (52). These passages feel like they are Lisa's.
And yet, immediately after the first appearance of Lisa-as-child, Claudia follows with a first person assessment of it. (Her first person voice seems the clearest and most dependable of any of the passages--it is the one we can feel the most confident is Claudia's voice.) "That Lisa--that Lisa fettered by ignorance but also freed by it--is as dead as ammonites and belemnites, as the figures in Victorian photographs, as the Plymouth settlers" (46).
Now this is quite odd. Why exactly does Claudia pop up here with this remark? One way or another, she seems privy to the fact that the previous passage concerned Lisa as a child and that it revealed her being "fettered by ignorance." The most coherent explanation is that Claudia is the narrator, Claudia is the one retelling Lisa's story, one which took place years ago. And after relating the incident from the view she imagines as Lisa's, she then inserts herself to the fore of the narrative, following her train of thought from Lisa as child to Lisa as adult. So it seems most plausible that Claudia wrote Lisa as she imagined her.
Yet there are several "facts" that Lisa mentions that Claudia probably did not or could not know. Lisa details the contents of her grandmother's dressing table (53) and mentions a conversation between Granny Branscombe and herself in the garden (171). As an adult she thinks about an affair hidden from Claudia and of other things:
And because since I was a small child I have hidden things from you: a silver button found on a path, a lipstick pilfered from your bag, thoughts, feelings, opinions, intentions, my lover. (56)
So we are bounced back to the impression that this must be the real Lisa speaking after all. Or so, now, it seems.
Many readers will find the last paragraph of the novel to be the most problematic as we search for a narrator. A conventional reading would suggest that Claudia has died, and a third person omniscient narrator is describing the room after her death. "And within the room a change has taken place. It is empty. Void" (208). Under this reading, the final paragraph emphasizes the finality of her death and the way in which history--cars, planes, and the six o'clock news--moves on without her. There are no mourners in the room, no characters to weep and keep her alive in their heads. There is a finality to her end.
And if we take this passage as spoken by an omniscient narrator, then we must accept that other passages may be written that way as well. But which ones? The final paragraph makes us question all the preceding ones.
If we are to read the novel as written exclusively from Claudia's perspective, how can we account for this last scene? It could be Claudia imagining her own death. She pictures what the world would be like without her--in her small world, the world in which she is central, everything changes. Prior to her death, the room is filled with light and beauty:
The bare criss-crossing branches of the tree are hung with drops and as the sun comes out it catches the drops and they flash with colour--blue, yellow, green, and pink... Claudia gazes at this; it is as though the spectacle has been laid on for her pleasure and she is filled with elation, a surge of joy, of well-being, of wonder. (207)
But then she imagines the room without her, when she can no longer witness the spectacle. The room darkens, becomes still and empty. It is no longer bright with color and light. There is an implied sadness about the lifelessness in the room. Claudia was always bright and lively. Her color was red. In visualizing her own absence, she sees that color gone. But ever the historian, she also knows that history marches on. The six o'clock news continues.
It is not hard to believe that a dying woman would try to picture the effect of her death on the world around her. Most of us do the same. But Lively doesn't give us enough clues to know definitely how to read the text--both interpretations hold.
Before deciding whom our narrator is, let us consider its importance to understanding several passages, beginning with Lisa.
The other Lisa, the Lisa unknown to Claudia, is positive while not assertive, is prettier, sharper, a good cook, a competent mother, an adequate if not exemplary wife. She knows now that she married too young too quickly the wrong man, but has found ways to make the best of the situation…Eventually, one day, when the boys are older, Lisa and her lover may marry, if she can persuade herself that Harry would be all right. (60)
If this is Lisa's viewpoint, then Lisa appears as more accomplished and self-aware than Claudia believes; Claudia seems self-absorbed and inadequate as a mother, since she so grossly misreads her daughter; and Lisa appears ready to reject her whole life with her husband. Yet if this is Claudia writing, the meaning behind the passage is flipped: Claudia then hopes that Lisa has secrets from her, is having an affair, is more capable than she seems, is planning on changing her life. It may be that Lisa never did realize she married too young, didn't have an affair, has no plans to leave Harry, and isn't really prettier and sharper--merely that Claudia wishes these things were so. And since Lively isn't giving us a good basis for choosing between these two scenarios, we are left with the possibility of not knowing whether a or not a is true.
The book is sprinkled with these passages, where the meaning of the text can vary from subtle variation to direct contradiction depending on whom is telling the story. The greatest impact, however, is on how we view the characters themselves. How sophisticated are they, how self-aware, how generous in their assessment of others? Claudia, in particular, is a very different character if she did, in fact, narrate the entire book. She is observant enough to imagine the articles on her mother's bedside table, imaginative enough to see the world from a child's view, bright enough to consider the perceptions and motives of others. For those readers who would like to know what these characters are really like and what really happened, they will find the search for a clear narrator an exercise in creative frustration.
For Lively has left too many contradictions and clues to decide definitively. There are too many passages which argue for the view that Claudia is the only one who could coherently be narrating--and yet, there are also too many "facts" which other characters allude to which she could not credibly know. This leaves us with three possible interpretations.
The first is that Claudia is the only narrator, and that in her reconstruction of other characters, she sometimes makes up or imagines certain details to lend texture to the narrative--that her book more closely resembles creative non-fiction than it does "traditional" history. (For example, a historian would not imagine Lisa might have a lover and give him a name.)
The second is that there are multiple narrators including Claudia as an omniscient one. This would explain how other characters are able to speak, but also how Claudia is able to comment on their passages (see above page 9). This approach would certainly be imaginative, but not very credible. When is the novel told, and by whom? It first seems to take place after Claudia is hospitalized, and that everything preceding her hospitalization is a flashback. But if she is commenting on the flashbacks of other characters, how does she accomplish this? Are their views written on a page which she reads, knowing her remarks will follow? Does she somehow compile these passages? It is hard to know how a character could know these things without having godlike powers.
The third possibility is that Lively isn't attempting to present a narrative that can "make sense" logically--that the pieces when viewed next to each other are not coherent. This would explain how the same passage has a tone, for example, that Sylvia could not write, but includes facts that only she could know. Whether this is intentional (brilliant experimentation) or accidental (inadvertent error) is hard to say. But it would mean that Lively has broken the understood laws that there must be consistency in who the narrator of a given passage is and in how they know what they know.
There doesn't seem to be a clear way to choose among these three alternative readings, and that may be Lively's intent. I find the first possibility the easiest to swallow, because it requires the least bending of the rules while operating under the assumption that Lively knows what she is doing. The problem with feeling satisfied with the novel is that none of these three options seems wholly convincing or credible, leaving the reader with the feeling that Lively is playing a bit fast and loose with her narrators.
What is clear is that Lively plays with perspective to tease and tantalize the reader into thinking about history differently. The view that the telling of history varies depending upon the historian telling it has become a trite one, yet Lively chooses to make this point in a compelling way. She examines a given moment from the viewpoint of several characters, or at least from Claudia's best guess at what these characters might think, in order to produce a multifaceted description of the moment. She attacks traditional history in other ways as well, rejecting a linear narrative and a separation of public from private events.
We must not confuse narrator Claudia's views with Lively the trained historian's views, however. Lively herself has said that she would not write such a subjective or iconoclastic history as Claudia attempted, for Claudia the character was influenced by the conservative nature of professional historians of her time (Moran, PL, 159). Yet by the time Lively wrote Moon Tiger, historical methods had evolved, taking into account relativistic perspectives and incorporating the personal lives of individuals, both famous and ordinary. So Claudia's views of how history is written were already outdated by several decades by the time of Lively's writing. That doesn't undermine the interest of the novel or its enjoyment for readers, but does indicate why the ideas presented don't seem particularly novel or fresh. Lively combines experimental use of kaleidoscopic flashbacks and non-linear narration with a compelling cast of characters to gradually unfold a unique history of the world and of Claudia. She tells an engaging story in an intriguing way. Under close examination, however, one cannot convincingly make coherent a narrative viewpoint in the novel, which leads to an unsatisfying feeling that Lively didn't quite pull off the experiment she intended.
Bibliography
Moran, Mary Hurley. Penelope Lively. New York: Twayne, 1993
Moran, Mary Hurley. "Penelope Lively's Moon Tiger: A Feminist 'History of the World.'" Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 11, no.2-3 (1990): 89-95
Raschke, Debrah. "Penelope Lively's Moon Tiger: Re-envisioning a 'History of the World.'" Ariel: A Review of International English Literature, 26:4, October 1995: 115-132
