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Allusions
Chapters 1–16
Explanation and Analysis—Meeting Miss Waterford :
In Chapter 4, the narrator uses a flashback to craft Strickland's story, going back to the actual moment and recreating the party at which he first met Mrs. Strickland:
No one was kinder to me at that time than Rose Waterford. She combined a masculine intelligence with a feminine perversity, and the novels she wrote were original and disconcerting. It was at her house one day that I met Charles Strickland’s wife. Miss Waterford was giving a tea-party, and her small room was more than usually full. Everyone seemed to be talking, and I, sitting in silence, felt awkward; but I was too shy to break into any of the groups that seemed absorbed in their own affairs. Miss Waterford was a good hostess, and seeing my embarrassment came up to me.
In The Moon and Sixpence, the narrator goes back and forth between paragraphs in the present and the past. This storytelling style allows the narrator to retell Strickland's story with hindsight bias and therefore an eye for entertainment. However, this method also lends the story an unreliable narrator, one who can craft scenes to foreshadow known futures or express others' words with their own opinions. At some points, the narrator even admits that his memory is imperfect. For example, in Chapter 21, he acknowledges that he had to write what he thinks Strickland once said:
He did not express himself quite like this. He used gestures instead of adjectives, and he halted. I have put into my own words what I think he wanted to say.
Nevertheless, the use of flashbacks allows the novel to have a conversational and genuine tone, as if the narrator is personally telling the reader the story of Strickland.
Chapters 17–42
Explanation and Analysis—Meeting Miss Waterford :
In Chapter 4, the narrator uses a flashback to craft Strickland's story, going back to the actual moment and recreating the party at which he first met Mrs. Strickland:
No one was kinder to me at that time than Rose Waterford. She combined a masculine intelligence with a feminine perversity, and the novels she wrote were original and disconcerting. It was at her house one day that I met Charles Strickland’s wife. Miss Waterford was giving a tea-party, and her small room was more than usually full. Everyone seemed to be talking, and I, sitting in silence, felt awkward; but I was too shy to break into any of the groups that seemed absorbed in their own affairs. Miss Waterford was a good hostess, and seeing my embarrassment came up to me.
In The Moon and Sixpence, the narrator goes back and forth between paragraphs in the present and the past. This storytelling style allows the narrator to retell Strickland's story with hindsight bias and therefore an eye for entertainment. However, this method also lends the story an unreliable narrator, one who can craft scenes to foreshadow known futures or express others' words with their own opinions. At some points, the narrator even admits that his memory is imperfect. For example, in Chapter 21, he acknowledges that he had to write what he thinks Strickland once said:
He did not express himself quite like this. He used gestures instead of adjectives, and he halted. I have put into my own words what I think he wanted to say.
Nevertheless, the use of flashbacks allows the novel to have a conversational and genuine tone, as if the narrator is personally telling the reader the story of Strickland.
