WPC 2M ZB0JXXx6X@X@X0Í ÍX0Í ÍҫXx6X@X@<6X9`+CourierX&G\  P&P(9 Z 6Times New Roman Regular&Xx6X@X@<6X9`+CourierX2#|m#&G\  P&P#  #Fanny Burney's Evelinaă  The Fanny Burney critical industry has really evolved within the last fifteen years. Though Evelina, Burney's first novel, was enthusiastically received at the time of publication and translated into three languages within a few years, and though the novel continued to be popular throughout the nineteenth century and drew some critical attention in the first half of the twentieth century,qЍSee Joseph Grau's Fanny Burney: An Annotated Bibliography (1981).q the rise of feminism in the academy has substantially increased the level of intellectual interest in Burney. My survey of the criticism has found that almost every recent essay on Evelina can be situated on a continuum of feminist criticism, though John Glendening's "Young Fanny Burney and the Mentor" would be more accurately described as a `reaction to feminist critiques of Burney's relationship with her mentors Samuel Johnson and Samuel Crisp, and John Hart's "Fanny Burney's Evelina: Mirvan and Mezzotint" has quite a specific and original focus on the characterization of Captain Mirvan within the context of eighteenthcentury satire. Still the predominant critical approach is feminist. Among the general topics of Evelina criticism are the discrepancies or gaps between the passivity of Evelina's character in social situations and the psychological engagement of her epistolary narrative, as well as a similar discrepancy between Evelina's conventionality and Burney's individuality. Perhaps the most productive topic of critical inquiry, however, is familial structures and relations in the novel, particularly the institution of marriage (a clear thematic focus of the novel), and the tension between fathers or fatherfigures and daughters. Yet another set of recurring issues is woman's language within the context of patriarchal social and linguistic structures, letterwriting and novelwriting as subversive genres for Evelina and Burney respectively, and Burney's particular brand of social satire. Having reviewed the criticism chronologically, I could be induced to mark some trends in this recent criticism. The work of the mid and late eighties, for example, seems to be chiefly informed by biographical criticism, while later work becomes more oriented toward the issues of language and representation, and the most recent works undertake more specific problems in the works and in the life from a more grounded sociohistorical perspective. The biographical criticism, as I have mentioned, tends to focus on the gaps between Burney and Evelina, between Evelina as social agent and Evelina as a narrator, and also on the related issues of marriage and fatherdaughter relationships. Among these essays is Katherine Rogers's 1984 "Fanny Burney: The Private Self and the Published Self," which compares the Burney of the journals with Burney's heroines and concludes, first, that the Burney of the early journals was constructed to accord with the ideals represented by the heroines and, second, that the mature Burney achieved a far greater independence and strength of will than was achieved by even her later heroines. The Simmons and Doody critical biographies published in 1987 and 1988 respectively draw parallels and disjunctions between the author's life and the works with respect to issues of marriage, fatherdaughter relationships, and the issue of private and public female identity. The Doody biography, Fanny Burney: The Life in the Works, is a far more substantial work than Simmons's short monograph; however, Simmons's Fanny Burney is a useful introduction to the author and works and fills an important niche in the criticism. Mary Poovey's essay, "Fathers and Daughters: The Trauma of Growing up Female" in the 1988 collection, Fanny Burney's Evelina can be described as both biographical and psychoanalytic. This piece develops arguments surrounding fatherdaughter relationship in Burney's life and in Evelina, and like much biographical and psychoanalytic work makes claims that seem to now be taken for granted even as this type of criticism is marginalized. The Kristina Straub monograph Divided Fictions: Fanny Burney and Feminine Strategy (partly based on two 1986 articles which appeared in EighteenthCentury Life and The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation) develops earlier critiques of marriage, women's occupations, and women's limited social options in maturity. In the second chapter Straub astutely describes Burney's work as creating a gap between romantic ideals and mature realities that gestures to other ideological possibilities, though Evelina makes no explicit protofeminist claims or arguments. Straub's discussion of Burney's particular form of satire in chapter four of this monograph, and John Richetti's discussion of women's language in his 1987 Studies in the Novel essay "Voice and Gender in Eighteenthcentury Fiction: Haywood to Burney" mark a transition in critical focus from biographical issues to issues of language and representation. Straub notes that Evelina's satiric reading of the female characters in her social sphere evokes a narrative tension and subtlety quite different from satiric sketches of women by male authors, and Richetti's article discusses the discrepancy between Evelina's satiric voice as a narrator and her very conventional female voice in public, drawing on the theoretical precepts of Elaine Showalter and Mikahil Bahktin regarding polyvocality. Recent monographs by Julia Epstein, Katherine Rogers, and Joan CuttingGray continue this focus on language and genre. Epstein's The Iron Pen: Frances Burney and the Politics of a Woman Writing (1989), focuses on the act of letterwriting in the novel and the manner in which this practice both conceals and reveals the heroines "burgeoning intelligence" (96). Epstein particularly marks the conventional acceptance of letterwriting as an artless genre in contrast to Evelina's constructed passivity and her satiric observations of other characters. And Rogers's 1990 Francis Burney: The World of 'Female Difficulties' develops a critique of Burney's satire within the context of the "manners comedy" genre (40). Joanne CuttingGray's Woman as 'Nobody' and the Novels of Fanny Burney is the most strongly feminist reading of the works. CuttingGray critiques the idealistic, historical alignment of women with nature and innocence, and the requirement that women somehow relinquish or conceal experience. Her argument though basically sound and interesting, seems abstractly complex at the cost of its historical grounding. In other words, the work obscures the sociohistorical contexts of the gender trouble it so aptly identifies. The most recently published article of this survey represents an interesting departure from the feminist discourse in its focus on character type and other forms of cultural representation. John Hart's "Fanny Burney's Evelina: Mirvan and Mezzotint," published last year (1994) in EighteenthCentury Fiction, discusses Captain Mirvan as a navalofficer type within the context of eighteenthcentury satiric prints, as well as the distinction between caricature and character type in novels of this period. Particularly interesting is Hart's explication of satiric humor as symptomatic of xenophobia and class antagonism. This essay, I think, expands the purview of Burney criticism and points to the possibility of looking through the issue of gender to other sociocultural issues within the novel and the time periodafter the golden age of the eighteenthcentury novel as it were. I am also impressed by Hart's knowledge of the visual arts and the interdisciplinary bent of his discussion. Departing from Hart's work I would like to suggest that the Burney industry would now be best served by critiques that place the novels and/or the novelist within a richly elaborated sociohistorical context. This is not to suggest that biographical, or linguistic, or feminist work is no longer required, but rather that already established arguments might be placed in a broader historical frame work. This could only help Burney's reputation and the lot of women writers of any period. Finally, I would like to note a lack of formalist or structural criticism of the novels. Although the reasons for this may seem selfevident within the current critical climate, I think that some types of structural criticism are possible and fruitful within current critical approaches. I put this suggestion forth because in my recent reading of Evelina I noted a good deal of formal elegance and complexity; and this should be foregrounded, I think, lest her work continue to be regarded as romantic scriblings by those critics who hold more conservative aesthetic criteria.  Evelina: A Selective Bibliography ă V' Biography ă Baldwin, Louise. One Woman's Liberation: The Story of Fanny Burney. Wakefield: Longwood Academic, 1990 Doody, Margaret Anne. Frances Burney: The Life in the Works. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1988 This is best biography of Fanny Burney to my knowledge (though I haven't seen the Baldwin). Based on extensive original research and a comprehensive reading of the works, Doody's work constitutes a major contribution to Burney scholarship. The Evelina chapter details the evolution of the novel including Burney's initial shame for being engaged in the occupation of novelwriting, and her experiences in the "marriage market" that parallel the novel's narrative tensions. The chapter also affords a thorough reading of the novel and a synthesis of previous criticism. Farr, Evelyn. The World of Fanny Burney. London: P Owen, 1993. Kelly, Linda. Juniper Hall: An English Refuge from the French Revolution. London: Weidenfield and Nicolson, 1991. Simmons, Judy. Fanny Burney. Houndmills: Macmillan, 1987. Simmons explicates the "subterfuge" of Burney's production of Evelina and the novel's contemporary success, noting both the "climate of almost universal mediocrity" in which the novel appeared as well as its artful balance of conventional forms and incisive social satire. The subsequent reading of the novel is similar to other contemporary critiques, focusing on Evelina's passivity and Burney's ambivalence to the mature female characters. # Letters and Journals ă Burney, Fanny. Diary and Letters of Madame d'Arblay. Ed. Charlotte Barrett. New ed. London: Chatto and Windus, 1876 Burney, Fanny. The Early Journals and Letters of Fanny Burney. Ed. Lars E. Troide. Oxford: Clarendon, 1987 Burney, Fanny. The Journals and Letters of Fanny Burney (Madame D'Arblay). Ed. Joyce Hemlow with Curtis D. Cecil and Althea Douglas. Oxford: Clarendon, 1972 @ *Reference Works and Recent Editions ă Grau, Joseph A. Fanny Burney: An Annotated Bibliography. New York: Garland, 1981. This is a comprehensive but dated bibliography, useful for tracking early editions and contemporaneous responses to the works. Early responses to Evelina where indeed enthusiastic in England and abroad, as the criticism has generally noted. Burney, Fanny. The Wanderer, or Female Difficulties. Ed. Margaret Anne Doody, Robert L. Mack, and Peter Sabor. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1991. Burney, Fanny. The Witlings. Ed. Clayton J. Delery. East Lansing: Colleagues Press, 1995  CriticismMonographs and Collections Bloom, Harold. Ed. Fanny Burney's Evelina. New York: Chelsea House, 1988. A selection of critical essays described as "the best modern interpretations," though with notable omissions. Most of the essays were published in the previous two decades with the exception of the Epstein and Wagner essays, which were published for the first time in this collection. Bloom's reaction to the feminist readings in this collection is typical of his particular sense of academic propriety, as is the ivyleague cache of the contributors; however, these essays should be judged on their own merit. I found the Poovey essay "Fathers and Daughters: The Trauma of Growing Up Female" particularly interesting and productive. Brown, Martha G. "Fanny Burney's `Feminism': Gender or Genre?" Fetter'd or Free?: British Women Novelists, 16701815. Ed. Mary Anne Schofield and Cecilia Macheski, 2939. Athens: Ohio U P, 1986. CuttingGray, Joanne. Woman as 'Nobody' and the Novels of Fanny Burney. Gainesville: U P of Florida, 1992. CuttingGray's strong feminist reading of Evelina builds on the already established gap between the innocence of Burney's heroine and the experience of the authoress, emphasizing the alignment between innocence and nature in Burney's conception of Evelina but, perhaps, exaggerating the author's distance from this social ideal. Though Evelina's ability to speak is clearly circumscribed in the novel, and though Evelina may be seen as relinquishing or concealing her experience, this reading fails to acknowledge, except in the most abstract terms, the strong social interdict against such behavior which was operative not only for the heroine, but for the authoress as well. Daugherty, Tracy Edgar. Narrative Techniques in the Novels of Fanny Burney. New York: Peter Lang, 1989. Devlin, D. D. The Novels and Journals of Fanny Burney. Houndmills: Macmillan, 1987 Epstein, Julia. The Iron Pen: Frances Burney and the Politics of Women's Writing. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1989 Chapter three of this monograph builds on Epstein's contribution to the Bloom collection, "Evelina's Deceptions: The Spirit and the Letter," focusing on Evelina's epistolary production which at once reveals and conceals her "burgeoning intelligence." Letterwriting, Epstein points out, is conventionally accepted as an artless genrea completely spontaneous and sincere response to given circumstances. Through her epistolary narrative Evelina constructs a proper passivity, though her commentary on other characters betrays an active and engaged psyche. Johnson, Claudia L. Equivocal Beings: Politics, Gender, and Sentimentality in the 1790s: Wollstonecraft, Radcliffe, Burney, Austen. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1995. Rogers, Katherine M. Francis Burney: The World of `Female Difficulties'. New York, Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1990 Rogers's Evelina chapter argues that Burney's was the first "lifelike and engaging" heroine of the period, and points out that the female perspective of Burney's satire enriches "manners comedy" as it both foregrounds and ridicules male social superiority. Rogers, Katherine M. Feminism in EighteenthCentury England. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1982. Simmons, Judy. Diaries and Journals of Literary Women from Fanny Burney and Virginia Woolf. Houndmills: Macmillan, 1990. Straub, Kristina. Divided Fictions: Fanny Burney and Feminine Strategy. Lexington: U P of Kentucky, 1987. This monograph supplements Straub's 1986 articles in The EighteenthCentury: Theory and Interpretation and EighteenthCentury Life (reproduced as the second and fourth chapters), with an additional chapter on Evelina. Chapter three develops Straub's argument that novel represents marriage as an institution which oppresses and/or excludes women, in spite of the romantic idealism of Evelina's successful match. Here, again, Straub focuses on the mature women in the novel, as well as the unfortunate circumstances of Caroline Evelyn's match. Straub also notes the precariousness of Evelina's union with Orville, which illustrates the "narrow chance" of happiness for a young women in the eighteenthcentury. $$ CriticismArticles ă Glendening, John. "Young Fanny Burney and the Mentor." The Age of Johnson. 4 (1991): 281312. This is an informative, interesting, and scholarly account of Burney's relationship to her two mentors, Samuel Johnson and Samuel Crisp. Glendening paints an almost romantic portrait of these relationships and objects to feminist critiques which suggest that Burney, at times, resisted Crisp's conservatism. Of particular value is the article's reading of the characters of Villars and Orville as expressions of Burney's admiration and affection for Crisp. Hart, John. "Fanny Burney's Evelina: Mirvan and Mezzotint."  EighteenthCentury Fiction. 7.1 (1994): 5170. Hart's article discusses the sources of Captain Mirvan's character in representations of naval officers in circulation during the 1770's, and the difference between "caricature" and "type" in Burney's work among other forms of art. In general, this article is valuable because it describes the "climate of rough humour," symptomatic of xenophobia and classantagonism, which the novel represents in various dramatic scenes. Richetti, John J. "Voice and Gender in Eighteenthcentury Fiction: Haywood to Burney." Studies in the Novel 19 (1987): 26372. Richetti discusses the novels of female writers Eliza Haywood and Fanny Burney in terms of woman's language and in the context of eighteenthcentry fiction at large. The article makes particularly interesting observations of the relationship between narrative and dramatic voices, commenting that Evelina's private written observations of her social circle are satiric, at the same time that she strictly observes "the decorum of female speaking" in public. Theoretically, Richetti draws on the works of Elaine Showalter and Mikahil Bahktin, though these seem somewhat peripheral to his readings. Rogers, Katherine M. "Fanny Burney: The Private Self and the Published Self." International Journal of Women's Studies 7.2 (1984), 110117 Rogers compares Burney's private self (the self of her journals), with her published self (as it is "projected" in her heroines), and finds that Burney, in spite of her literary adventures, largely accorded with a "negative ideal" of social and moral conduct, and felt "beleaguered" by men who took advantage of her propriety/passivity. However, the article also notes that Burney constructed this private self of the journals to a certain extent and suppressed any potentially compromising characteristics and concerns (including virtually any mention of her career as a writer). What finally separates Burney most dramatically from her heroines, however, is that fact that Burney gained a remarkable independence and courage in her maturity by rising to various personal challenges, while her heroines remained circumscribed by social and narrative conventions. Straub, Kristina. "Fanny Burney's Evelina and the `Gulphs, Pits, and Precipices' of EighteenthCentury Female Life." The EighteenthCentury: Theory and Interpretation. 27 (1986): 23046. This article focuses on Evelina's portrayal of feminine maturity and the ideological possibilities that arise out of the apparent gaps between feminist and patriarchal readings of the novel. Straub notes that Burney was on the brink of becoming an "old maid" at twentysix when she wrote the novel, and that the narrative of romantic love at once covers and expresses the author's anxieties and bitterness about her own expectations, as it marks the lopsided power relations between men and womeneven in happy romantic matches. The better part of the essay, however, discusses the representation of the secondary female characters, Mrs. Selwyn and Madame Duval, which tacitly supports the idealogies of romantic love and female submission (as the mature women become foils for Evelina's more decorous character and social success), but also clearly expresses the limited options for mature women in the eighteenth century. Straub, Kristina. "Women's Pastimes and the Ambiguity of Female SelfIdentification in Fanny Burney's Evelina." Eighteenth Century Life 10.2 (1986): 5872. Here Straub discusses Fanny Burney's relationship to formative, eighteenthcentury "institutions of femininity," identifying a tension between Evelina's accordance with conventional social roles and Burney's writerly violation of those roles, and claiming that this contradiction is inherent in the social circumstances of "female selfidentification" in this period. Though Burney's satire in the novel is often directed at women, Evelina's detachment from and judgement of various women and womanly institutions renders the novel a more subtle and complex commentary on eighteenthcentury womanhood than was offered by much of the broadbrushed male satire which Burney rejected. Evelina Introduction: In general the criticism represents a continuum of feminist readings with, perhaps, one exception in the Hart essay which focuses on a male cultural character type in Captain Mirvan. Among the popular topics in the criticism are: the gap between Evelina as actor and Evelina as narrator, and between Evelina as character and Burney as authorinnocence and experience, nature and art female language within the context of the patriarchy novelwriting and letterwriting as subversive genres for Burney and Evelina the nature of Burney's particular brand of satire the institution of marriageas oppressive and/or exclusivereferring to the example of the mature charactersand Burney's own predicaments the relationship between fathers and daughtersBurney and Evelinaalso mentors Conclusion: the criticism is refreshingly untheoreticalinformed but not burdened with feminist assumptions still doing ground work I guess, though I hope it doesn't go in the direction of esoteric criticismI'd like to see more historically grounded cultural criticism, and/or formal criticism which I think is very possible my thesis, is looking at the tension between social proprietyconduct and deliberative actionwhat, I think makes Evelina so lively, and what makes the novel original and interesting, setting it apart from its predecessors and really anticipating the deliberative sophistication of Austen's heroines#Xx6X@X@#