Evelina - Frances Burney

Evelina by Frances Burney

Genre: Classics

Blurb (on back of book): Frances Burney's first and most enduringly popular novel is a vivid, satirical, and seductive account of the pleasures and dangers of fashionable life in late eighteenth-century London.

As she describes her heroine's entry into society, womanhood and, inevitably, love, Burney exposes the vulnerability of female innocence in an image-conscious and often cruel world where social snobbery and sexual aggression are played out in the public arenas of pleasure-gardens, theatre visits, and balls. But Evelina's innocence also makes her a shrewd commentator on the excesses and absurdities of manners and social ambitions—as well as attracting the attention of the eminently eligible Lord Orville.

Evelina, comic and shrewd, is at once a guide to fashionable London, a satirical attack on the new consumerism, an investigation of women's position in the late eighteenth century, and a love story. The new introduction and full notes to this edition help make this richness all the more readily available to a modern reader. 

MY OPINION: ***

I read this book for my English class and actually found it to be more enjoyable than I thought it would be. I'm not going to talk a lot about it because I just wrote an essay on it and I don't think I can handle much more...

I'd never heard of this book prior to this class despite the fact that it is such an important achievement for women in this time period. That makes me sad because I feel like this is something we should have read in high school over another white man's works...

I noticed a LOT of similarities between this and Jane Austen's writings (which came after). Austen was very inspired by Burney and I definitely saw that throughout this book. Both focus on women in "high" society and coming-of-age and follow these women's struggles to navigate marriage, relationships, status, and love in a male-dominated world. 

This is an epistolary novel, and I enjoyed reading all of the letters. While I am never the hugest fan of epistolary books, I did find enjoyment in this one because most of it was from the perspective of Evelina and read like any other book. Evelina is clearly naive and brand-new to the world of London and her perspective is quite entertaining and relatable to read from.  

The book has a clearly feminist tone, though more subtle than expected. I guess I understand the inability of a female writer to write a clearly "feminist" piece of work in this time period but I did enjoy the ways that she managed to criticize the patriarchy in this book. The book focuses a lot on the various ways men exerted violence against women in this time period, physically, verbally, and emotionally. It made me quite sad and enraged to see how common such manipulative and misogynistic events were and honestly still are. 

I enjoyed watching the love story unfold between Evelina and Lord Orville because it was very realistic. She is constantly questioning his feelings for her, jumping to conclusions, and generally getting very worked up over him. This is quite real to many modern-day relationships, which I thought was funny. No matter how much we've progressed, we still have not changed in some ways. 

This book was honestly way longer than it needed to be. That's my only real complaint about it. It dragged on at times and I had to resort to the audiobook to finish it because of how lengthy and laborious it felt at times. However, I'd still recommend this book to fans of Austen and feminist lit.

Main Character: Evelina

Sidekick(s): Lord Orville, Maria, Villars, etc

Villain(s): Misogyny, Captain Mervin, etc

Classics Elements: This is one of the earlier pieces of women's literature.