Narrator and point of view
The short story “Lispeth” by Rudyard Kipling is for the most part a third-person narration. The narrator is outside the story and seems to have knowledge about all the characters.
The narrator follows the point of view of various characters. For example, the narrator knows how the local people feel about Lispeth: “Her own people hated her because she had, they said, become a memsahib [a white woman] and washed herself daily” (p. 266, ll. 14-16). The narrator also knows what happens to the Englishman after he leaves the village: “He forgot all about her by the time he was butterfly-hunting in Assam. He wrote a book on the East afterwards. Lispeth’s name did not appear there.” (p. 268, ll. 14-16). However, the narrator's focus is on Lispeth, most of the narrative following her life story and key events in the girl’s life: “…and tried to imagine where her Englishman was.” (p. 168, ll. 10-11)
Even though the story is a third-person narration...