Why We Read Fiction_ Theory of Mind and the Novel - Lisa Zunshine [79]
The concept of variously weighted metarepresentational framings provides us with a useful framework for comparing detective novels with other works of fiction that have at different times been productively likened to them, such as Austen's Emma. Austen's novel has been described as "the most fiendishly difficult of detective stories,"1 and, indeed, its ending requires from us the type of cognitive work associated with the endings of detective novels. In a typical detective narrative, once the murderer is found out and his/her motivation is explained, we have to think back and revise our earlier interpretations of the events of the story, an important metarepresentational readjustment. Similarly, in Emma, once we are told the truth about Frank Churchill and Jane Fairfax, we have to reflect back onto the entire novel and modify our earlier interpretations of certain "clues," such as the timing of Frank's first arrival at Hartfield, the gift of the piano, Jane's insistence on getting her mail herself, and so on. Note, however, that when we read Emma the first time, we store the interpretations of these "clues," mostly provided by Emma, with relatively weak metarepresentational framing because, although ready to readjust them to some degree, we do not expect that they will have to be revamped so drastically. By contrast, the "real" detective novel alerts its readers early on to the fact that every bit of interpretation provided by characters ought to be distrusted until the end—an example of a very strong metarepresentational framing. Of course, within the same detective story, we can store information provided by different suspects, or even the same suspect on different occasions, under very different degrees of advisement; and, moreover, as we go on reading, we constantly modulate the relative strength of metarepresentational framing used to process the characters' presumed or claimed mental states. Still, the whodunit is associated with a much stronger internal metarepresentational framing than, say, a comedy of manners, such as Emma.2
(a) One Liar Is Expensive, Several Liars Are Insupportable
The reader of the detective story is supposed to "suspect everybody" (Paretsky, Bitter Medicine, 48). This constant readiness to keep under strong advisement any current explanation of any character's mental state comes at a price. To understand why it is so, we can turn again to the argument of the first section, in which I showed that Mrs. Dallotuay at times pushes our ability to process embedded intentionalities beyond our cognitive zone of comfort (i.e., beyond the fourth level). I think that it is significant that on such occasions Woolf does not try to make us guess at her characters' states of mind. Instead, she tells us quite explicitly what they are thinking, feeling, or desiring. In the scene at Lady Bruton's that I discussed earlier, we are told what Lady Bruton feels as she watches Hugh; we are told what Hugh thinks as he unscrews the cap of his pen and begins to write; and we are told what Richard thinks as he watches Hugh and observes Lady Bruton's reaction to Hugh's implicit assertions. The scene is challenging because the reader has to process a string of five- and six-order intentionalities. But at least Woolf does not require us to store the information about Lady Bruton's. and Hugh's states of mind under advisement by having implied, for example, that Lady Bruton and Hugh just pretend to be thinking about the letter to the editor and are really concerned about something else, and so Richard's complex reconstruction of their states of mind could be all wrong, and we have to wait for another ten or ninety pages to find out what Lady Bruton and Hugh were really thinking about. That is, within the world of the novel, we are allowed to consider the thoughts of the characters at this particular junction not as tentative guesses to be verified later but as architectural truths that can circulate freely among and affect indiscriminately our cognitive databases concerned with the lives and feelings of Mrs. Dalloway