These are some postings to the old AUSTEN-L e-mail list, on Frances Burney's 1778 novel _Evelina_ and Maria Edgeworth's 1801 novel _Belinda_. ====================================================================== Date: Tue, 28 Feb 1995 18:12:48 -0600 Sender: Jane Austen discussion list From: Henry Churchyard Subject: Burney's _Evelina_ I finally got through _Evelina_ a month ago, and here are a few quasi-random observations: 1) In _Evelina_ Fanny Burney shows an amazing frequency and level of pervading male sexual predation which is almost totally lacking in Jane Austen (practically the only time Jane Austen even mentions the idea is to make fun of it in _Northanger_Abbey_, or in Sir Edward Denham's delusions in _Sanditon_) -- the only female characters who are in any danger or "fall" in Austen are those that were weak in the first place (this is true even in the Juvenilia in _Lesley_Castle_). 2) I was struck by the character of Maria Mirvan, who is a true nullity of a "confidante", totally undeveloped and only existing for purely mechanical/structural reasons. Jane Austen is never so clumsy. 3) On the other hand, you learn more about the amusements of London (and more vividly) in this one novel, than in all of Jane Austen's novels and minor works. On the whole Burney is much more artificial and sentimental than Austen. -- --Henry Churchyard churchyh@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu ====================================================================== Date: Thu, 13 Jun 1996 18:28:50 EST Sender: "Jane Austen (moderated) list" From: Henry Churchyard Subject: Belinda Since the formal charter of this group actually includes Maria Edgeworth (as well as Burney and Wollstonecraft) among the topics of discussion, I hope no one will mind a little third-grade book report about my recent reading of _Belinda_ by Edgeworth (published 1801 -- it is one of the three novels mentioned in the "defense of the novel" in _Northanger Abbey_): On the whole, this book was fairly easy to get through (more easily readable, for me, than Burney's _Evelina_). It is a "sentimental" novel, in that characters start to reform merely because someone has pointed out to them the errors of their way (without there being much concern with a realistic examination of motives) -- but it's not a _silly_ sentimental novel: no one instantly utterly reforms from blackest vice to purest virtue, and Lady Delacour is always there to make little half-cynical pronouncements which somewhat offset the didacticism of the novel (even at the very end, after her reformation). In short, to quote Lady Delacour's own words, even though the novel is didactic, "I take it all in good part, because to do Clarence justice, he describes the joys of domestic Paradise in such elegant language that he does not make me sick". However, I do wonder a bit about the "Virginia St. Pierre" a.k.a. Miss Rachel Hartley plot at the end. It's as if Edgeworth got near the end and decided that she didn't have her due quota of high-flown improbable creaking clanking plot devices, such as reunions between long-lost relatives, missing heiresses, excessive disinterested generosity on the part of one suitor towards his rival, over-scrupulous delicacy which keeps the lovers apart for some rather unlikely reason, until they rush into each other's arms, etc. etc. -- so she just decided to cram it all into the last few chapters! And she was apparently somewhat at a loss as to how to finish off the book, so that the concluding tableau is not only unrealistic, but _stagily_ unrealistic (though even here Lady Delacour brings things down to earth somewhat). But I like the humor in _Belinda_ (Clarence Hervey throws down the music stand with his hoops!) better than the somewhat unhealthy "humor" in Burney's _Evelina_, where grotesque buffoons act out the revenge fantasies that the excessively virtuous heroine does not allow herself to consciously indulge in (throwing Madame Duval into the wet ditch, biting off Lord Lovell's ear). _Belinda_ does contain Edgeworth's portrait, intended to be ideologically anti-feminist, of Mrs. Freke; however, I would imagine that feminists would actually be more seriously offended by earnest Victorian passages on the necessity and divinely-ordained nature of female self-sacrifice and such-like, than by the rather harmlessly off-target ridicule in _Belinda_ (Mrs. Freke doesn't really identifiably represent the feminism of the 18th or any other century). Edgeworth also threw a mythic/archetypal component into _Belinda_ (something that is conspicuously lacking in Austen's novels), in the form of Virginia St. Pierre's dreams -- I don't doubt that the "Mrs. Bennet and the Dark Gods" type interpreters have gone whole hog in analyzing these. Previously, I had only read Edgeworth's _Castle Rackrent_, which I found cute, but not really very impressive, and part of _The Absentee_, which I bogged down fairly quickly in -- so _Belinda_ came as a pleasant surprise to me. I think that her Irish stuff doesn't agree with me. One final thing -- Edgeworth is a pretty fair ethnographer: she gives somewhat explicit explanations of some of the customs and social realities of her day. Austen, who didn't explain much, but mostly took such customs for granted as already being known to her readers, may have been the greater literary artist, but after so much time has passed, Edgeworth's explicitness is now somewhat useful. I include three ethnographic passages below; the first of these expands on one reason why Elinor is worried about Marianne's actions in _Sense and Sensibility_. (If a young lady and a young gentleman gave many publicly visible signals of mutual attachment, but the relationship between the two ended without the man having proposed, or an engagement having been announced, then the woman might be viewed as having broken the code of maidenly modesty of the period and damaged her reputation by imprudently offering up her affections without having had a firm assurance of future marriage -- and it was very likely that a few spiteful gossipmongers would speculate that the girl had actually consented to have sex, and that once the man had thus gotten what he had really wanted, he then broke it off.) Here Miss Belinda Portman is not sure she would accept Mr. Vincent if he were to propose to her, and Lady Anne Percival is urging her to give Mr. Vincent more time to attach her affections: ____________________________________________ Chapter 17 Belinda Portman: "But if I should be entangled, so as not to be able to retract! -- and if it should not be in my power to love him at last..." "...after a certain time -- after the world suspects that two people are engaged to each other, it is scarcely possible for the woman to recede: when they come within a certain distance, they are pressed to unite, by the irresistible force of external circumstances. A woman is too often reduced to this dilemma: either she must marry a man she does not love, or she must be blamed by the world -- either she must sacrifice a portion of her reputation, or the whole of her happiness." Lady Anne Percival: "The world is indeed often too curious, and too rash in these affairs," said Lady Anne. "A young woman is not in this respect allowed sufficient time for freedom of deliberation. She sees, as Mr. Percival once said, `the drawn sword of tyrant custom suspended over her head by a single hair.'" "As we cannot alter the common law of custom, and as we cannot render the world less gossiping, or less censorious, we must not expect always to avoid censure; all we can do is, never to deserve it -- and it would be absurd to enslave ourselves to the opinion of the idle and ignorant. To a certain point, respect for the opinion of the world is prudence; beyond that point, it is weakness." ____________________________________________ Chapter 15 Letter from Mrs. Stanhope to Belinda Portman (her niece): "my dear, without character, what is even wealth, or all that wealth can bestow? I do not mean to trouble you with stale wise sayings, which young people hate; nor musty morality, which is seldom fit for use in the world, or which smells too much of books to be brought into good company. This is not my way of giving advice; but I only beg you to observe what actually passes before your eyes in the circle in which we live. Ladies of the best families, with rank and fortune, and beauty and fashion, and every thing in their favour, cannot (as yet in this country) dispense with the strictest observance of the rules of virtue and decorum. Some have fancied themselves raised so high above the vulgar as to be in no danger from the thunder and lightning of public opinion; but these ladies in the clouds have found themselves mistaken -- they have been blasted, and have fallen nobody knows where! What is become of Lady ---- and the Countess of ----, and others I could mention, who were as high as envy could look? I remember seeing the Countess of ----, who was then the most beautiful creature my eyes ever beheld, and the most admired that ever was heard of, come into the Opera-house, and sit the whole night in her box without any woman's speaking or courtesying to her, or taking any more notice of her than you would of a post, or a beggar-woman. Even a coronet [of nobility] cannot protect a woman, you see, from disgrace: if she falls she and it, and all together, are trampled under foot." ____________________________________________ Chapter 24 Lady Delacour: "Well, Marriott, what of Mr. Hervey?" The servant Mrs. Marriott (to Lady Delacour and Belinda Portman): "Oh, my lady, something you'll be surprised to hear, and Miss Portman, too. It is not, by any means, that I am more of a prude than is becoming, my lady: nor that I take upon me to be so innocent as not to know that young gentlemen of fortune will, if it be only for fashion's sake, have such things as kept mistresses (begging pardon for mentioning such trash); but no one that has lived in the world thinks anything of that, except," added she, catching a glimpse of Belinda's countenance, "except, to be sure, ma'am, morally speaking, it's very wicked and shocking, and makes one blush before company, till one's used to it, and ought certainly to be put down by an act of parliament, ma'am; but, my lady, you know, in point of surprising anybody, or being discreditable in a young gentleman of Mr. Hervey's fortune and pretensions, it would be mere envy and scandal to deem it anything--- worth mentioning." ____________________________________________ -- "His name is Henry, a proof how unequally the gifts of fortune are bestowed." -Jane Austen, 10/14/1813 || Henry Churchyard http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~churchh ====================================================================== Date: Fri, 14 Mar 1997 12:52:19 -0600 Sender: Jane Austen List From: Henry Churchyard Subject: Evelina > From: Linda Veronika Troost > I second the recommendation of Evelina I think a lot of people who like Austen may find Burney's _Evelina_ heavy going; she has the gushing sentiment and quite a few of the creaking clanking plot devices (persecuted heroine, coincidental meetings between long-lost relatives, disputed and murky inheritance, etc. etc.) that Austen was trying to get away from. _Evelina_ also has the special twist that the heroine can never act against, or even really feel resentment towards, her persecutors, but instead the author supplies other characters, crude parody grotesques, who act out the heroine's suppressed desires for revenge. Also, if you think that Fanny Price is sanctimonious, than you haven't yet seen Evelina Anville-Belmont (partly this is because most of the information that is supposed to lead us to conclude that Evelina is a near-paragon -- and exceptionally and stunningly beautiful besides -- must be conveyed to us through Evelina's own letters, given Burney's general epistolary plan for the novel). I'm not saying that _Evelina_ is necessarily an all-round bad book, or that you can't enjoy it and like it for what it is -- just that I believe that it's definitely not every Austen-reader's cup of tea! Maria Edgeworth's _Belinda_ might be more generally acceptable. -- "His name is Henry, a proof how unequally the gifts of fortune are bestowed." -Jane Austen, 10/14/1813 || Henry Churchyard http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~churchh ====================================================================== Date: Wed, 20 May 1998 07:35:31 Sender: Jane Austen List From: Henry Churchyard Subject: We can't have that now, can we... [Belinda] Recently I found a remaindered copy of Maria Edgeworth's _Belinda_ for $1, and I've been sporadically flipping through it, rereading some of the parts I like -- and these have reminded me how much better I like _Belinda_ than _Evelina_. Here's one quote that struck me, from a letter to Belinda Portman from her aunt, the worldly Mrs. Stanhope, in chapter 6: "...when a young lady professes to be of a different opinion from her friends, it is only a prelude to something worse. -- She begins by saying that she is determined to think for herself, and she is determined to act for herself -- and then it is all over with her" (Here "friends"="family", basically...) -- Henry Churchyard churchyh@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~churchh "Haughty Spain's fleet Advances to our shores, while England's fate, Like a clipp'd guinea, trembles in the scale!" -- Sheridan "The Critic" (1779) ====================================================================== http://www.pemberley.com/janeinfo/janeinfo.html