In Ellen Foster, Kaye Gibbons uses stylistic writing to create a narrative voice that is distinctive and memorable. To establish her unique style, and subsequently create an authentic narrative voice, Gibbons plays with grammar and punctuation, sentence structure, and language.
One of the most notable stylistic decisions that Gibbons employs is around dialogue. There is no clear, apparent dialogue in the book, though on occasion there is the illusion of dialogue. This is achieved in part because Gibbons uses no quotation marks to signal and set off dialogue, and no dialogue tags. But this ambiguity in dialogue also comes from the sentence structure and what is being said. The reader has the feeling that the dialogue is being retold to them as a part of the story rather than bearing witness to the actual dialogue as it has occurred.
Gibbons omits other customary punctuation, such as a lack of commas, to further effect the narrative voice. For example: “Her art room is in the back apart from the rest of the school so she had not seen the time but she pulled my head to her stomach and said to let’s go home.” (p. 54) and “They put her in a box too and him in a box oh shut the lid down hard on this one and nail it nail it with the strongest nails.” (p. 70). The lack of punctuation creates a particular mode of speech which fits the narrator’s character perfectly.
One of the most interesting and textural style choices is in Gibbon’s use of unique language and phrases, sometimes using incorrect words to further flavor the narrator’s voice. There are many examples of this throughout the book, including “right much” (p. 30), “her time was what all that I needed” (p. 57), “drawed” (p. 58), “easedropping” (p. 67), and “growed” (p. 98).
The sum of these style choices, establishes a strong sense that this story is being told verbally, by Ellen Foster herself, to an unknown, unseen audience, or perhaps directly to the reader him/herself. This sense of listening to the story is made stronger by the occasional use of the word “you.” For example: “When or if you come to my house now after church you will smell all the things that have been simmering on low.” (p. 58) and “Then you go to the girls department and tell the lady you need the sizes bigger than the ones you have in your hand.” (p. 97). The reader has the feeling that s/he is hearing and receiving the story first hand from the narrator.
Through the particular stylistic choices that Kaye Gibbons makes in Ellen Foster, the reader resides in Ellen’s head, becomes a part of Ellen, as she tells her story. The style and narrative voice pull the reader into the story and hold him/her there until the end. Gibbons could have chosen any number of styles for writing this story, but none would have brought the reader as close to the narrator as the style Gibbons used. The style and voice are ideally suited to the character of Ellen Foster, a young girl from the rural south who has suffered a great deal of grief, dislocation, and disconnection in her short life.
(Page numbers are based on Vintage Books, 1990, paperback edition)
