more thoughts on an outside narrator

I was erroneously thinking that my narrator needed to be someone who always made good choices because that would "white bread and butter" them into not overshadowing the main story. They need to be, well, a tad boring on their own. Elysa pointed out that there were/are a lot of people who made consistently good choices but whose lives were far from boring. Mother Teresa, Elisabeth Elliot (like her better as a missionary than an advice giver for moms), Hudson Taylor, Ruth Bell Graham. I find it interesting (other than Ruth) that all of them went to foreign countries and expended themselves on behalf of others. Not that Ruth didn't expend herself. She did.

Anyway. So who does Mrs. Groves need to be:

1. I've already decided she's the coal company owner's housekeeper.
2. Why is she there? She's obviously intelligent enough to narrate this book? Why a housekeeper?
3. She's got to be originally from the East Coast so that my own writing voice makes her voice authentic.
4. She must love the coal company owner, but not in a romantic way. That would just clutter her up and complicate matters in a way I absolutely do not wish to explore. Why the attachment? What brought her to Kentucky with him? (I have my thoughts on this but if anything exciting comes to mind, feel free to share! It may be a better idea than my own.)
5. There must be a reason why she has left her hometown back East and has no compunction to return.
6. No children. Although, perhaps, an older child who's living as safe and boring a life as she would be okay.
7. I must be able to keep her in the background, and yet develop her fully. That's going to be a real challenge without my usual naval gazing, copious interior monologue M.O.
8. The climax must involve her and she must experience her own denouement which will affect her life forever. The narrator must go on, and we must have a clear picture of what her life will be from then on out. Even if the painting of that picture is succinct.

Hmm. Those are my thoughts for now.

Comments

[Elysa]

Hmmmm...about number 3. Perhaps she is at least 15 or so years older than the owner so that would make a romantic liason unlikely. And perhaps she feels personally indebted...maybe she was married to a faithful employee who was killed on the job. She was always intellectually curious and well-read but growing up as the oldest child from a blue collar family, college was never an option. She married young and though she had no children right away, she had to help care for some invalid relative(perhaps her mother in law?) and so working out of the home was not an option. This relative later died but by this time, she had given birth to one child. With no job skills and a child to support (who had come along later in life), her deceased husband's boss hires her as his housekeeper when his wife dies and leaves him with small children to raise. Mrs. Groves is able to raise her daughter and also the bosses children so there is not only a bond of gratitude (the job and later the boss helps send her daughter to college) but a feeling of family.

Would something like this work?

[Elysa]

Okay, so the boss has never been married. Maybe he was engaged at one point to her daughter or baby sister? They lost her thru an accident that then bound them together.

Or perhaps she was the daughter of the housekeeper who was around when he was growing up. Mrs. Groveses watched him growing up and always viewed him as a bit of a baby brother or nephew. Her mother loved him deeply. When Mrs. Groveses finds herself widowed, she's asked to become to him what her now deceased mother was for his parents all those years.

I can't WAIT to meet Mrs. Groveses when she's all grown up and fleshed out one of these days. I think I'm going to really like her despite the fact that she's not an attention grabbing character. ;)