The Role of Miss Kenton in the Characterisation of Stevens (in Kazuo Ishiguro's novel The Remains of the Day)

Seminar paper from the year 2002 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,7, RWTH Aachen University (English Department), course: Fictional Histories and (Auto)biographies: Julian Barnes - Kazuo Ishiguro - Graham Swift, 5 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: This retrospection gradually reveals Stevens' peculiar character. Accordingly,The Remains of the Dayis a novel about the central figure's character and the change it undergoes in the course of the years. Characterisation plays a very important role in it. The use of diary-like entries for certain stops on Stevens' journey suggest the explicit characterisation of the figure through the first-person narrator. However, the reader is confronted with an unreliable narration that combines homodiegetic and extradiegetic features in regular intervals. Thus the reader cannot fully rely on the statements of the narrator in order to get a picture of his character. What is much more telling is the butler's way of hiding and overlooking things, his not-telling, which characterises him far better and more objectively than his own notion of himself does. Due to the narrative perspective and Stevens' few relations in life4there are not many subsidiary figures who can serve as an additional source describing the butler's traits of character. Nevertheless, there is one figure in the novel which can give information about the former stateandchange of Stevens' character. This figure is Miss Kenton, who has been the housekeeper at Darlington Hall for many years and who developed a relationship to Stevens that can be called the most emotional he had ever had. It is the purpose of this paper to analyse her role in the characterisation of Stevens. However, I want to stress that this paper is not supposed to be a full and exhausting characterisation of the figure of the butler. It is rather intended to deal with the different aspects the figure of Miss Kenton contributes to the characterisation and change of character Stevens undergoes in the course of the novel. This will be done by focussing the following aspects: 1. Miss Kenton's direct statements about Stevens. 2. The relationship between Stevens and the housekeeper and what it tells about Stevens' emotional life. 3. The interaction between the two figures. This aspect will briefly deal with their dialogues and will be combined with the comparison of Stevens' and Miss Kenton's highly contrary natures and what they mean with regard to the revelation of Stevens' character traits. According to these aspects, my analysis will mostly remain on the story-level only. The discourse level might be touched as far as the narrative situation is concerned, since most of the information about Stevens is conveyed through his own narration.