Fanny Burney is only the sixth woman, out of 56 books so far, whose work appears on the “1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die” list, so it's tempting to read her work and look for parts that a man wouldn't write or even know about. Burney covers a good many of what we might think of as “women's issues” in “Evelina”; does her attention to those issues and her conclusions about them have anything to do with the fact that she was a woman herself? I'm concerned about drawing such inferences, just because reducing Burney's work and career to a topic in women's studies might seem like a way to dismiss her as a “woman writer” rather than thinking of her as a writer. But let's dive into that question and see for ourselves whether her femaleness might have informed her writing. Maybe we won't be able to draw any conclusions on the subject, but let's find out.
“Evelina” came out in 1778. The title character is an innocent young woman, raised by an English country clergyman after the death of her mother. Her father, a baron, though married to her mother, refused to acknowledge either the marriage or the child. In her young adulthood, she takes a trip to London with a friend, despite the misgivings of her adoptive father. Her naivete and innocence get her in a certain amount of trouble right away, not least because just about every man of her approximate age falls in love with her on the spot.
This is hardly surprising in an 18th century English novel, nor is it particularly surprising that “Evelina” takes the epistolary form – it consists of letters to and from various characters (mostly Evelina herself), like many novels of that time. Now, however, comes the “woman author” question (maybe). In novels written by men, the female characters often have to put up with the insistence of the male characters on having their way regardless of these women's wishes and desires. In real life, of course, it's only fairly recently that a woman's right to live as she chooses has even been acknowledged, let alone enforced, so it's clear enough that when “Evelina” came out, women had to put up with that kind of male behavior for lack of any apparent options. In “Evelina” itself, however, we have one of the few literary works of the time in which that sort of male behavior receives the proper emphasis.
Thus, various men – most of them far from the sort of men Evelina can even tolerate – declare their passion for her, and when she objects they say things like “You won't be so cruel, will you?” and refuse to go away. All too often, they seize her hand or fall to their knees and refuse to get out of her way so that she can leave the room. Admittedly, Evelina frequently expresses her disinterest in the politest terms she can manage, which is how she was raised to express herself, so it's easier for these men to make a nuisance of themselves than it otherwise would be. The men either assume she's being civil to them as a way of giving them permission to keep after her, or they just don't care. On the other hand, her meaning is clear enough, and the men in question simply ignore it.
Even more infuriating, most of the time these men affect to fall in love with her knowing almost nothing of her other than the fact that she's very pretty. There's even a scene where a couple of these men, in conversation over the supper table while Evelina is sitting right there, declare that no woman can possibly find a use for any intelligence whatsoever, and that they themselves find intelligent or witty women quite intolerable. Makes you wonder to what extent Fanny Burney experienced boneheads like this in life.
There's a good deal more to “Evelina” than relationships between the sexes; Evelina goes to London with no apparent intention of finding a husband at all, although the people she meets (male and female) don't seem to understand that. What's more, most of those people, both family and otherwise, strike her and the reader as just horrible. Her best friend's father spends all his time planning and playing practical jokes, and when the jokes infuriate the one they're aimed at, the gentleman who pulled them simply laughs. A woman visiting from France who turns out to be a relative of hers, who has never bothered to look her up in all her previous years, announces without consulting her that the two of them will shortly go to live in Paris so that Evelina can be trained in the ways of society; although the French lady never says so, it's obvious enough that she wants to get Evelina married off, whether she's interested or not. Most of the people Evelina encounters over the course of this story, apart from the various men who make nuisances of themselves, think of her as boring, unenlightened and unfashionable, and therefore treat her with the coldest disdain. Which is bad enough, of course, made all the worse by the fact that Evelina meets this treatment with a certain amount of sadness, but no anger, and with civility and moral restraint at all times.
I have to wonder just how realistic these people are compared to actual 18th century English society, or whether this is just straight-up satire. It's fun to read about, but it would be some kind of hell to live through, I imagine. Fortunately, by the end of the novel, Evelina not only gets to live happily ever after, but also gets to show all those louses around her just what decent life and behavior can lead to, and it's all wonderful.
Well, did you expect anything less? This is an 18th century novel, after all.
Benshlomo says, Too bad we don't all live in 18th century novels, where the good and the evil get just what they deserve.
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