A New England Nun

An omniscient narrator has access to the thoughts and feelings of all the characters in a work of fiction. Omniscient narrators were popular in 19th-century fiction because they produced a sense of authority in the narrative voice and because they lent themselves to techniques like satire and the genre of psychological realism, which became popular in the second half of the 19th century.

In “A New England Nun,” the omniscient narrator stays closest to Louisa’s point of view, but the reader has access to Joe’s thoughts and feelings as well. The omniscient narrator has distance from the characters’ feelings, as opposed to a first-person narrator, who presents the story from the protagonist’s direct point of view, or limited third-person narration, which maintains some distance from the protagonist but describes their thoughts and feelings to the exclusion of other characters’.

The use of an omniscient narrator is important because the story is about two people who misunderstand each other. Much of the story’s tension arises from the reader’s knowledge that Louisa and Joe are not in love with each other while the characters believe that breaking the engagement would mean breaking the other’s heart.