larryhammer: floral print origami penguin, facing left (0)
Larry Hammer ([personal profile] larryhammer) wrote in [personal profile] coraa 2010-10-13 07:34 pm (UTC)

Some of Jane Austen's omnicient narrators -- I'm thinking of Northanger Abbey in particular -- are unreliable, but I'm not sure this quite fits the bill. For one thing, we never get any indication of the narrator's gender.

The only other 19th century example I can think of by a woman author is Jane Eyre. I'm pretty sure, um, let me see, a novel by Wilkie Collins (The Woman in White? I think??) in which there is an extensive testimony from a female character, not all of which is veracious -- I forget whether she was giving false or unreliable testimony, though.

If you just want lying female characters who aren't villians, the heroine of The Eustace Diamonds. But she never narrates, and the omniscient narrator always immediately points out when she changes her story.

---L.

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