The opening scene of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall (2009) depicts a violent, action-packed encounter between Walter and his son, Thomas. The omniscient third person narrator describes the events that occur almost like a report, providing insights into the thoughts and feelings of characters whilst remaining objective, reliable and disembodied. There is an alarming imbalance of power between father and son, foregrounding the main themes of family and domestic violence. While Thomas is portrayed as a weak and passive character, Walter is depicted as abusive and domineering. In order to investigate these interpretations of the text, this essay will explore transitivity, deixis, and modality and shading.

 

Transitivity analysis, which “aims to make clear how actions are performed through clauses; who performs these actions and who or what these actions are performed on” (Ong’onda 2016: 79), will be used to investigate the inequitable and abusive relationship between Walter and Thomas. This decision was motivated by Lams’ (2019) research on the agency of refugees in Dutch news coverage. Lams’ (2019) claims that the transitivity choices made by narrators not only provide an insight into the power and agency of characters, but these choices also provide an insight into the narrator’s attitudes towards the participants involved in the event.

 

In the extract, the distribution of material processes provides a clear insight into the agency (or lack of) possessed by both Walter and Thomas. While Thomas appears to produce more material processes in comparison to other participants, the analysis has revealed that the production of material processes is not necessarily indicative of power. For instance, many of the material processes produced by Thomas are ineffectual and do not even produce an effect on his environment, demonstrating Thomas’ physical weakness and lack of control (3c, 7b, 14c, 15a). Moreover, it must be noted that many of these processes are produced through Thomas’ body parts, i.e. meronymic agency (Burton 1982). This highlights that Thomas’ physical injuries hinder him from achieving full control over both his body and the situation at large. Dissimilarly, 15 out of 16 of the clauses describing Walter’s actions select the option of material-action-intention, demonstrating Walter’s unrelenting power and dominance in the scene (Burton 1982). Nevertheless, one must acknowledge that many of Walter’s material processes are framed hypothetically by the narrator, because the narrator frequently relates what Thomas anticipates Walter’s actions to be without providing any clear indication that these actions do in fact take place (10d, 15b). Therefore, this indicates that much of the action that occurs within the extract is in fact mediated through the tortured perception of Thomas, because “there is a greater focus is on the interior consciousness of [Thomas] and not on the narrator’s perception of the characters” (Neary 2014: 177-180). Hence, the fact that Thomas’ thoughts are largely concerned with Walter demonstrates Walter’s control over both Thomas’ physical-world and thought-world. Consequently, the narrator’s casting of Walter in the ‘negative agentive role’ within both of these worlds supports the initial interpretation of Walter as an unredeemable character, who possesses absolute power (Lams 2019: 90). Furthermore, the fact that Walter’s portrayal is often refracted through the consciousness of Thomas highlights that the narrator’s portrayal of Walter is, perhaps, more subjective than first perceived. It is evident that the narrator’s omniscience is restricted to the perspective of Thomas, and therefore the portrayal of Walter is unreliable. However, it appears that Walter begins to lose control towards the end of the extract as his material processes become increasingly unintentional and Walter becomes the ‘goal’ rather than the ‘actor’ of both God’s and the devil’s actions (Halliday 2014): 30a, 45b. Therefore, this indicates that Walter does not sustain the ‘negative agentive role’ and is not completely in control throughout the extract as one may have first interpreted (Lams 2019: 90).

 

In addition to this, the distribution of mental and verbal processes also illustrates Walter’s power over his son.  For instance, at the beginning of the extract, Walter acts as the ‘sayer’ of many verbal processes, whilst Thomas acts as the ‘receiver’ (Halliday 2014): 12b. Nevertheless, Walter’s verbal processes become much more aggressive and animalistic, suggesting that while he still has control over his son, he has somewhat lost control of himself (both as a father and a human)— becoming much more erratic and unhinged (10b, 19b, 24a, 27b). In contrast, while Thomas does not produce many verbal processes at the beginning of the extract, Thomas produces much more mental processes in relation to Walter (14b, 16a, 17d, 21a, 31a). This sharp contrast constructs Thomas as a much more rational and insightful character, who is able to fully master his emotions and thoughts in comparison to Walter, who seemingly has no control over his thought-world (Burton 1982). With this in mind, one can deduce that whilst Walter obtains physical power, Thomas is much more mentally powerful than Walter. Hence, this refutes the initial interpretation of Thomas as a completely passive character and also suggests that Walter’s influence over Thomas is not as unrelenting as initially perceived. Nonetheless, though one may argue that the material process in 43b demonstrates Thomas’ newly gained power, it also conveys a sense of fear and dismay. Therefore, while Thomas may be more in control than one first thought, his ability to control the emotional and physical pain inflicted upon him by Walter is unstable. Despite this, the fact that the reader often sees events from the perspective of Thomas may account for why we gain more insight into his mental processes in comparison to Walter’s. This further emphasises the subjectivity and unreliability of the narrator, because this restricted viewpoint means that the narrator is unable to access (or merely neglects) the internal world of Walter, which in turn impacts how he is perceived by the reader.

 

However, it must be noted that the way in which Walter is perceived is not necessarily as static as originally thought. For instance, although Walter is habitually referred to by name throughout the text, the narrator does occasionally deviate from this pattern and refers to Walter as ‘father’ and ‘parent’ (8, 12, 43). One may suggest that this serves to humanise Walter and remind the audience of his relation to Thomas. However, this is rather unsettling because the narrator almost humanises a character that, until this point, has exclusively been portrayed as an abusive, depersonalised figure. This challenges the previous argument that the narrator provides a subjective and limited depiction of Walter and indicates that the narrator does not consistently mitigate events through the perception of Thomas. On the other hand, one could argue that Thomas’ consciousness is in fact refracted in instances where ‘father’ is used whilst the narrator presents their own perspective in instances where ‘Walter’ is used instead of the other way around. It is important to note that ‘parent’ and ‘father’ are used to refer to past instances or in instances where Walter is arguably gentler towards Thomas, indicating that this is Thomas’ perspective: “his parent asks”. Whereas, ‘Walter’ is used to refer to Walter’s present being, highlighting the narrator’s perspective: “the devil to… take away Walter his servant”. Moreover, the fact that the narrator ultimately shifts back to the use of ‘Walter’ may highlight that the narrator’s perspective is the final one the reader encounters in this extract and ultimately reminds the reader that even though we have encountered the perspective of Thomas, the events detailed—including the thoughts of Thomas— are narrated from the perspective of the narrator and not Thomas himself.

 

The point of view taken by the narrator (i.e. “the perspective from which events and/or thoughts are told” (Neary 2014: 175)) will be analysed using modality, which refers to “a narrator’s attitude towards the situation or actions depicted in a sentence (Neary 2014 cites Simpson 1993). The decision to investigate modality was influenced by Simpsons’ (1993) claims that despite there being distinctions between the modal grammar used in first and third person narratives, third person narrators are still able to inhabit the voice of characters and create a sense of closeness between the character and narrator. This appears to be occurring in the extract, and therefore this framework will be utilised to explore the attitudes and perceptions of the narrator.

 

From analysing the text, it is evident that the narrator consistently transitions between different types of narrative shading. For instance, when describing the actions of Walter, the narrator employs the Category B Negative narrational mode, which is indicated by “the absence of reporting [Walter’s] thoughts or feelings, and the employment of words of estrangement” (Neary 2014: 186 cites Simpson 1993). This is significant because this type of shading is often used in the description of villains and to distance the narrator from the villain’s undesirable consciousness: “Walter bellows. He hops on one foot, as if he’s dancing” (Neary 2014: 186 cites Simpson 1993). Nonetheless, one could argue that the narrator also attempts to distance themselves from Thomas because words of estrangement and epistemic modality are often used to describe Thomas’ actions, e.g.”His eyes are turned towards the gate, as if someone might arrive to help him out”. However, Simpson (1993) makes a distinction between Category B Negative narrational mode (B(N)-ve) and Category B in negative reflector mode (B(R)-v), which is “characterised by a narratorial assumption of a degree of omniscience that facilitates entry into a character’s consciousness and subsequent reflection of narrative events through their consciousness” (Neary 2014: 186 cites Simpson 1993). Arguably, the transition from B(N)-ve to B(R)-ve mode is encapsulated in lines 3-4. Therefore, this challenges the initial interpretation of the narrator as completely neutral and objective, because it is clear that the narrator often adopts the voice of Thomas whilst distancing themselves from Walter. Despite this, while the narrator does rely on negative shading to create distance and/or closeness between themselves and characters, the narrator primarily relies on neutral shading (2, 3, 4). Hence, while the narrator may occasionally transition into the consciousness of Thomas, the narrator does attempt to remain objective on the whole.

 

Deixis will also be employed to examine the point of view taken by the narrator. Deixis is “the language of pointing… and establishes a relationship between the referent and the context of utterance— only gaining meaning in relation to the context of the utterance” (Burke 2014: 260). The selection of deixis was motivated by the research of Jeffries (2013: 185), who claims that “third person narratives do provide viewpoint for the reader to take up… and is quite often taken from the deictic centre of the narrative’s characters”. Hence, deixis has been selected to establish the deictic centre, with the intention to distinguish between the narrative voice of Thomas and that of the narrator.

 

Within the extract, “despite all the participants being referred to in third person”, the narrator establishes the viewpoint of Thomas and not Walter through Thomas’ prominence in the extract (Jeffries 2013: 185). Whilst Walter is referred to by name and noun phrases where the head noun indicates a relationship with Thomas, e.g. his father and his parent, Thomas himself is more intimately referred to by ‘he’ (Jefferies 2013: 185). This opposes the initial perception that the narrator takes on an objective, disembodied point of view. Moreover, this interpretation can be supported by the findings of the transitivity analysis, which revealed that the narrator had greater access to Thomas’ thought-world than other characters. This highlights that the narrator’s omniscience is in fact restricted, with the narrator actively deciding to take on the perspective of Thomas. Nevertheless, the narrator’s use of person deixis becomes quite puzzling because one can argue that use of the pronouns ‘he’, ‘his’ and ‘him’ is rather ambiguous in some clauses (14, 30). This makes it difficult to establish whether the deictic centre is in fact Thomas or his father, constructing a sense of chaos that suggests that the narrator is unreliable and unable to distinguish between the consciousness of Thomas and Walter. This sense of chaos is further emphasised by the temporal shifts created between the narrator’s alternating use of present and past tense, making it difficult for the reader to establish the narrator’s perspective of time, which in turn suggests that the narrator is unreliable (3, 6, 7). Alternatively, one could argue that these shifts represent Thomas’ perspective as he begins to lose consciousness at this point in the extract.

 

In conclusion, this analysis has revealed that the relations of power within text are not as rigid and are far more complex than originally thought. Furthermore, it is clear that the narrator’s point of view is not static and alternates throughout the extract, suggesting that even though the narration is in third person, the narrator is able to relate the events from the consciousness of characters, which was something quite unexpected and was not considered in the initial interpretation. Although the tools used in this investigation have been useful and have helped to both support and challenge initial interpretations of the text, it is clear that the use of each tool in isolation may lead to varying interpretations and, therefore, these tools must be used collectively in order to provide a comprehensive reading of the text.

 

References

 

 

Burke, M. (2014) The Routledge Handbook of Stylistics. London: Routledge

 

Burton, D. (1982) ‘Through Dark Glasses, Through Glass Darkly.’ in Language and Literature ed. by Carter, R.  London: Allen & Unwin, 195-214

 

Halliday, M.A.K. (2014) An Introduction to Functional Grammar. New York: Routledge

 

Jeffries, L. (2013) Readers and Point-of-view in Contemporary Poems: a Question of Pronouns. [online] available <https://journals.openedition.org/esa/1526 > [29 March 2020]

 

Lams, L (2019) Agency and Power in the Dutch-Language News Coverage of the Summer 2015 Refugee Situation in Europe: A Transitivity Analysis of Semantic Roles. [online] available from < https://www.jstor.org/ > [29 March 2020]

 

 

Neary, C. (2014) ‘Stylistics, Point of View and Modality’. in The Routledge Handbook of Stylistics. ed. by Burke, M. London: Routledge, 175-90

 

Ong’onda, N. (2016) Transitivity Analysis of Newspaper Headlines on Terrorism Attack in Kenya: A Case Study of Westgate Mall, Nairobi. [online] available from < http://www.ijhssnet.com/journals/Vol_6_No_9_September_2016/10.pdf > [29 March 2020]

 

Simpson, P. (2014) Stylistics: A Resource Book for Students. Routledge: London

 

 

Appendix

 

A Transitivity Analysis of the Opening Scene of Wolf Hall

 

Line No.	Participant	Participant role	Process	Process type	Participant	circumstance
2.	Thomas	Actor	Get up	Material
3a.	He	Actor	Fallen	Material
3b.	Walter	Actor	Knocked	Material	he	full length on the cobbles of the yard
3c.	His head	Actor	Turns	Material		sideways
4a.	His eyes	Actor	Turned	Material	The gate	towards
4b.	Someone	Actor	Arrive	Material
4c.	Someone	Actor	Help	Material	him	out
5a.	One blow	Actor	Placed	Material		properly
5b.	One blow	Actor	Kill	Material	him	now
6.	Blood	Actor	Trickling	Material	His face	across
7a.		Actor	Blinded	material	His left eye
7b.	He	Actor	Squints	Material		Sideways, with his right eye
7c.	He	Sensor	See	Mental	The stitching of his father’s boot
8a.	The stitching of his father’s boot	Actor	Unravelling	Material
8b.	The twine	Actor	Sprung	Material	The leather	Clear of
9a.	Hard knot	Actor	Caught	Material	His eyebrow
9b.	Hard knot	Actor	Opened	Material	Another cut
10a.	Thomas	Actor	Get up	Material
10b.	Walter	Sayer	Roaring	Verbal	him	Down at
10c.	Walter	Sensor	Working out	Mental	Where to kick him next
10d.	Walter	Actor	Kick	Material	him	next
10e.	He	Actor	Lifts	Material	His head	An inch or two
11a.	He	Actor	Moves	Material		Forward, on his belly
11b.	He	Sensor	Trying to do	Mental	It	Without exposing his hands
12a.	Walter	Behaver	Enjoys	Behavioural	stomping
12b.	His parent	Sayer	Asks	Verbal
12c.	He	Actor	Trots	Material		backwards
12d.	He	Actor	Gathers	Material	pace
13.	He	Actor	aims	Material
14a.	It	Actor	knocks	Material	The last breath/him	Out of
14b.	He	Sensor	Thinks	Mental	It may be his last
14c.	His forehead	Actor	Returns	Material	The ground	to
15a.	He	Actor	Lies	Material		waiting
15b.	Walter	Actor	Jump	Material	him	on
15c.	Bella	Sayer	Barking	Verbal
15c.	I’ll	Behaver	Miss	Behavioural	My dog
16a.	He	Sensor	Thinks	Mental
16b.	Someone	Sayer	Shouting	Verbal		Down on the riverbank
17a.	Nothing	Behaver	Hurts	Behavioural
17b.	Everything	Behaver	Hurts	Behavioural
17c.	Separate pain	Existent	There is no	Existential
17d.	He	Sensor	Pick out	Mental
18a.	The cold	Actor	Strikes	Material	him	Just in one place
18b.	His cheekbone	Actor	Rests	Material	The cobbles	On the
19a.	Thomas	Sensor	Look, look	Mental		now
19b.	Walter	Sayer	Bellows	Verbal
19c.	He	Actor	Hops	Material		On one foot
19d.	He’s	Actor	Dancing	Material
19e.	Thomas	Sensor	Look	Mental	What I’ve done
20a.	Walter	Actor	Burst	Material	My boot
20b.	Walter	Actor	Kicking	Material	Your head
21a	Thomas	Sensor	Never mind	Mental	If he calls you an eel or a worm or a snake
21b.	He	Sayer	Calls	Verbal	You	if
22a.	Head	Actor	Down	Material
22b.	Thomas	Actor	Don’t provoke	Material	him
22c.	His nose	Behaver	Clotted	Behavioural		With blood
22d.	He	Actor	Open	Material	His mouth	To breathe
23.	Him	Behaver	To vomit	Behavioural
24a.	Walter	Sayer	Yells	Verbal
24b.	Thomas	Behaver	Spew	Behavioural		everywhere
24c.	Thomas	Behaver	Spew	Behavioural		Everywhere, on my good cobbles
24d.	Boy	Actor	Come on	Material
24e.	Boy	Actor	Get up	Material
25a.	You	Actor	Get up	Material
25b.	Thomas	Actor	Stand	Material		On your feet
26a.	Thomas	Sensor	Thinks	Mental	Creeping Christ… what does he mean
26b.	His head	Actor	Turns	Material		sideways
26c.	His hair	Actor	Rests	Material	His own vomit	In
27a.	The dog	Sayer	Barks	Verbal
27b.	Walter	Sayer	Roars	Verbal
27c.	Bells	Sayer	Peal	Verbal		Out across the water
27d.	He	Sensor	Feels	Mental	A sensation of movement
28a.	The ground	Carrier	Become	Relational	The Thames
28b.	It	Actor	Gives and sways	Material	Him	Beneath
28c.	He	Behaver	Lets out	Behavioural	His breath
29a.	You’ve	Actor	Done	Behavioural	It	This time
29b.	A voice	Sayer	Tells	Verbal	Walter
29c.	He	Actor	Closes	Material	His ears
30a.	God	Actor	Closes	Material	Him
30b.	[Black Tide]	Actor	Pulled	Material	He	Downstream, on a deep black tide
31a.	He	Sensor	Knows	Mental	It is almost noon
31b.	He	Actor	Propped	Material	The doorway	In the
32a.	Kat	Actor	Coming	Material		From the kitchen
32b.	She	Sensor	Sees	Mental	him
33a.	She	Actor	Drops	Material	them
33b.	Her mouth	Actor	Opens	Material		In astonishment
33c.	Thomas	Sensor	Look	Mental	At you
34a.	Kat	Sayer	Don’t shout	Verbal	Thomas
34b.	It	Behaver	Hurts	Behavioural	Me
35a.	She	Behaver	Bawls	Behavioural		For her husband
35b.	She	Actor	Rotates	Material		On the spot
35c.	Face	Behaver	Flushed	Behavioural		From the oven’s heat
37a.	He	Actor	Shivering	Material		From head to foot
37b.	Bella	Actor	Fell	Material		Off the boat
38a.	A girl	Actor	Runs	Material		in
38b.	The master’s	Actor	Gone	Material		To town
39a.	I	Sensor	Know	Mental	that
39b.	She	Actor	Thrusts	Material	The tray	At the girl
40a.	You	Actor	Leave	Material	Them
40b.	Cats	Actor	Get at	Material	Them
40c.	I’ll	Actor	Box	Material	Your ears
40d.	You	Sensor	See	Mental	Stars
41a.	Her hands	Actor	Empty	Material
41b.	She	Actor	Clasps	Material	them	For a moment in violent prayer
41c.	Thomas	Actor	Fighting	Material		Again
43a.	He	Sayer	Says	Verbal	Yes
43b.	Thomas	Actor	Nodding	Material		Vigorously
43c.	His nose	Behaver	Drops	Behavioural	Gouts of blood
43d.	He	Sayer	Indicates	Verbal
44a.	Thomas	Sayer	Say	Verbal
44b.	Walter	Existent	Was here	Existential
44c.	Kat	Sayer	Calls	Verbal
45a.	The devil	Actor	Rise up	Material		Right now
45b.	The devil	Actor	Take away	Material	Walter
45c.	Thomas	Actor	Sit down	Material		Before you fall
45d.	You	Actor	Fall down	Material