Narrative perspective and voice are a major aspect of a short story, as Jeremy Hawthorn suggests in Studying the Novel, "[s]ource and medium affect the selection, authority and attitude towards what is told in the story » Narrative perspective can be used to shape or, in some cases, distort the story. Looking at both Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and George Eliot's Middlemarch, the narrators of these short stories exert some influence on the reader. Comparing and contrasting how the two different authors used narrative perspective to develop their novels, through voice, linguistic register, free indirect discourse, and narrative distance from the intimacy of shared information with the reader. Looking at both Jane Austen's Pride and George Eliot's Prejudice and Middlemarch, the point of view otherwise known as perspective and voice, are in opposition. Perspective and voice are defined by Hawthorn, as the viewpoints of the characters and events in the short story relate to human experience, making the short story more realistic. Pride and Prejudice can be seen in this light as the narrator explains events as the plot unfolds. In this line of thinking, the voice may be interrupted in the third person, semi-omniscient, but the perspective is primarily that of Elizabeth Bennett. Using a semi-omniscient voice works well because the information is not so easily divulged to the reader. In Middlemarch, the voice would be third person omniscient since the narrator knows everything and divulges this information, but the perspective would primarily be Dorothea, Lydgate, and the narrative. Through the story, the reader discovers information before the other characters in the story. Like Ha...... middle of paper ......res that keep these books alive for centuries. Due to the constraints of the essay, not all aspects of narrative perspective could be discussed and the role they play in the short stories. Works Cited • Austen, J. Pride and Prejudice (Ware: Wordsworth Classics, 1993) • Eagleton, T The English Roman (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2005)• Eliot, G Middlemarch (Ware: Wardworth Classics, 1994)• Hawthorn, J , Studying the Novel (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2010)• Morris, P Realism (Oxon: Routledge, 2003) • Newton, KM “Narrative in Middlemarch Revisited” in George Eliot Review, 42 (2011), p. 19-25.6 [accessed April 1, 2014]• Southam, B. C, “Jane Austen,” in The English Novel, ed. by AE Dyson (London: Oxford University Press, 1974)