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?
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2 comments:
Liana, your mention of her name as Anville being like an anvil got me thinking. What a great image for what Evelina has become throughout the book! That on which others hammer out and fashion something else. The anvil exists solely to act as a piece against which other things may be shaped and identified. That is its identity.
Ooo--what a wonderful point, Kris! I think that Liana's point, too, is very insightful--I wonder if we can take it further, and do justice to that sense of discomfort?
If Burney is "merely" reflecting her time period, then she's not really seen as helping produce the culture of which she is a part; to read history and culture in this linear format is to deny aesthetic agency, to read power as a monolithic, irresistible force. In which case, power relations would never change, because there's no room to change them. What if that sense of discomfort that you're feeling, Liana, is an effect that the novel cultivates? What might Burney be saying, in that case? Remember, when we talk about "Burney," we're really talking about the "authorial persona" created by the text, not the real, flesh-and-blood woman who wrote the novel.
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