Both Alana and Kris raised some very interesting points regarding Evelina. To add to their points, I'd like to throw out something that's bothering me after reading the novel.
Don't get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. Burney did an excellent job with the characterization, the writing, especially the dialogue, etc., but the gender inequality of her time period shines through. Of course, that's not a critique of Burney; she is merely portraying the world as she sees it.
What especially bothered me about this novel was Evelina's search for her name. Specifically, she is searching for her rightful name and fortune. Her very identity! The whole book is about this struggle. But as soon as she gets what she was after, her name, she gives it up! Her marriage to Lord Orville completely negates her struggle for self identity. It's sad, really. Evelina is without a true identity for so long, and her true moment of awareness is too brief. Is that silly? It's really bothering me!
Also, I'd like to talk a little bit about the name "Anville" that she is given by Villars. It makes me think of an anvil, which I'm sure it can't be referring to. Is it simply an anangram, or is it important in another way?
Monday, April 2, 2007
What's in a name in Evelina?
The Advantage of the Uncouth: Burney's Indictment of Middle-Class Morality
The Epstein essay surveying liminality in the heroines of Burney's novels drew a slightly different response from than was elicted from Alana. I was drawn to the fact that Burney depicted her heroines in these peculiar stations to explore their abilities to identify themselves in their societies. In the case of Evelina, I find her liminality, while certainly indicative of her inability to establish a position on her own, that is without a male counterpart, an interesting and often humorous probing of ridiculous social convention.
As Epstein points out, the liminalities with which Burney garners her heroines often "blast the social structures...of social preservation" (203). It is this point that attracted my attention during reading Evelina, and what drew my notice reading Epstein's essay. The humor of many of the early situations in the novel when Evelina goes to London stems from the absurdism of the conventions she needs to follow. It's true that Rev. Villars does not prepare her for the world in his overprotective rearing, and this leads to her inability to navigate her own way when she is released to it. But this serves the plot's purposes perfectly (all the while adding a realistical psychological dimension of weakness to his character), so I find it less an indictment of the paternal control of young women in society (though it is that) and more a circumstance within which Burney explores the utter lunacy of requiring such delicate and specific conventions given many other characters' true actions. In many ways, Evelina is better prepared for the world than many other women (notably Miss Mirvan), for she does not have the shackles of absurd convention to prevent her from detecting hypocrisy and cruelty in those that abuse those conventions. Evelina's inability to fend off suitors in a "suitable" way, leads her to more comic, uncivil, and effective means of protecting herself (e.g. accompanied by prostitutes, laughing in the faces of those she dislikes).