Third-person limited point of view, or third-person limited omniscient as it is sometimes called, is similar to the first-person point of view because it only conveys to readers what is seen, heard, thought, and felt by one character. The narrator refers to characters using the pronouns “he” and “she” rather than “I,” and the narrator is definitely not a participant in the story.
Here’s an example of the third-person limited point of view from “Miss Brill” by Katherine Mansfield
Source: Egerváry Lady with Fox Fur, Agost Egervary Potemkin, Wikimedia
ALTHOUGH it was so brilliantly fine—the blue sky powdered with gold and great spots of light like white wine splashed over the Jardins Publiques—Miss Brill was glad that she had decided on her fur. The air was motionless, but when you opened your mouth there was just a faint chill, like a chill from a glass of iced water before you sip, and now and again a leaf came drifting—from nowhere, from the sky. Miss Brill put up her hand and touched her fur. Dear little thing! It was nice to feel it again. She had taken it out of its box that afternoon, shaken out the moth powder, given it a good brush, and rubbed the life back into the dim little eyes. “What has been happening to me?” said the sad little eyes. Oh, how sweet it was to see them snap at her again from the red eiderdown! . . . But the nose, which was of some black composition, wasn’t at all firm. It must have had a knock, somehow. Never mind—a little dab of black sealing-wax when the time came—when it was absolutely necessary . . . Little rogue!
Do you notice a similarity between the first-person and this third-person limited narration? Although the narrator in this story is an observer rather than a character, it is similar to the first-person narration because we see what Miss Brill sees, feel what she feels, and listen to her thoughts.
Using your notes, write two examples from the excerpt that look like the first-person point of view, even though we know that this excerpt is third-person limited. When you're finished, check your understanding to see a possible response. Sample Responses:
“The air was motionless, but when you opened your mouth there was just a faint chill. . . .” “‘What has been happening to me?’ said the sad little eyes. Oh, how sweet it was to see them snap at her again from the red eiderdown!” “Never mind—a little dab of black sealing-wax when the time came—when it was absolutely necessary . . . Little rogue!”
When there’s only one character in a scene, third-person limited narration is pretty easy to identify. Let’s look at an example from a story that has a couple more characters involved. In the story “A Jury of Her Peers” by Susan Glaspell, Mrs. Hale is summoned by Sheriff Peters and Mrs. Peters to go to the house of a neighbor who was seemingly murdered by his wife. In the excerpt below, we read Mrs. Hale’s impression of Mrs. Peters:
Source: Trifles, Prudence Katze, Village Voice
After she had the robes tucked around her she took another look at the woman who sat beside her on the back seat. She had met Mrs. Peters the year before at the county fair, and the thing she remembered about her was that she didn’t seem like a sheriff’s wife. She was small and thin and didn’t have a strong voice. Mrs. Gorman, sheriff’s wife before Gorman went out and Peters came in, had a voice that somehow seemed to be backing up the law with every word. But if Mrs. Peters didn’t look like a sheriff’s wife, Peters made it up in looking like a sheriff. He was to a dot the kind of man who could get himself elected sheriff—a heavy man with a big voice, who was particularly genial with the law-abiding, as if to make it plain that he knew the difference between criminals and non-criminals. And right there it came into Mrs. Hale’s mind, with a stab, that this man who was so pleasant and lively with all of them was going to the Wrights’ now as a sheriff.
Mrs. Hale thinks about Mrs. Peters and compares her to the former sheriff’s wife, Mrs. Gorman. Phrases like “she remembered“ and “right there it came into Mrs. Hale’s mind“ tell us that we are privy to her thoughts.