Evelina by Frances Burney

I was eager to read Evelina because I knew Jane Austen considered it a favorite.  Somehow I thought that reading Evelina would be like reading Jane Austen:  a humorous novel of manners set in a rational and moral universe.  Well.  Evelina was not what I expected.  If Jane Austen is a genteel Regency ballroom, Evelina is a wild night at Vauxhall Gardens.  With a monkey.

Evelina Anville is the legitimate, though unacknowledged, daughter of an English aristrocrat.  Upon the death of her mother, Evelina was raised in rural seclusion by her guardian, the Reverend Villairs.  Eventually, Evelina's maternal grandmother, the ridiculous Mme Duval, learns of Evelina's existence and seeks to claim her and whisk her off to France.  To keep her from Mme Duval, the Rev. Villairs sends her to Howard Grove, the country home of friends.  Little did he know that Mme Duval would find her anyway, and a trip to London would soon follow. Most of the novel revolves around humorous situations in which poor, sheltered Evelina tries to navigate her way through society.  She eventually gets a happy ending with Lord Orville. 

The tone of this book was quite surprising.  Sometimes riotous and madcap, the book's wild humor was unexpected.  At one point, two of the characters dressed up like highwaymen just so they could terrorize an obnoxious Frenchwoman.  Then there is the time when some of the characters are bored because they have nothing to gamble on, so they get two eighty-year-old women to race just so they can bet on them.  The plots can be a bit over the top, with some truly wild coincidences and situations occurring.

Evelina has very little personality - despite this being an epistolary novel, with most of the letters written by her.  Her letters are more of a vehicle to deliver the plot rather than to give us her private thoughts.  We have some glimpses, of course, but it's almost like Evelina the character is a pawn to showcase every type of ill-mannered person in London.

In truth, it is the "bad" characters who seem to dominate this novel.  Between fending off the unwanted attentions of the rogue Sir Clement Willoughby, the incessant fighting between Mme Duval and Captain Mirvan, and the crass behavior of the Branghtons, Evelina gets very little peace - and neither does the reader.

I found the character of Madame Duval extremely tiresome.  A little of her would have gone a long way.  She is so over the top, so insufferably rude, tyrannical, and obnoxious, that while one or two scenes of this woman would have been funny, her behavior is so predictably horrid that it becomes boring.  By the same token, the relentless rudeness of the Captain is wearying.  Jane Austen may have learned from this.  Her boorish characters are diverting because she allows them to season her narratives, rather than overwhelm them.

The dubious tastes and want of care of Evelina's relations and their hangers-on land her in many awkward and unsavory situations, and Evelina's own want of social competence and street smarts always makes things worse.  One night Evelina finds herself dragged out to Vauxhall Gardens.  These London pleasure gardens were popular in the 18th through the mid-19th century, and were filled with entertainments and attractions.  At night they were lit up by thousands of lamps.  Spectacle abounded, with fireworks, hot air balloons, and a giant metal waterfall which seemed to flow thanks to a clever trick of the lights.  Poor Evelina becomes separated from her party and ends up in the infamous dark walks - there's a hint of danger in this scene that lends a somber note to the lack of care being taken of her.

Vauxhall Gardens

Evelina as Cinderella 

Evelina has distinct echoes of Cinderella.  Evelina is poor and simple, marked by beauty and inner goodness.  She has a dead mother, and an ineffectual/absent actual father, and a retiring/absent surrogate father.  Mme Duval can be seen as her wicked stepmother, and the Miss Branghtons the obnoxious stepsisters.  She moves from country seclusion into high society, and catches the eye of her prince, Lord Orville.

Evelina and Jane Austen

It's a strange sensation, reading Evelina, feeling that one has met with so many little scenes already.  We have a Willoughby - and the scene where Sir Clement Willoughby carries Evelina from the wrecked coach is a bit like when Willoughby carried Marianne Dashwood.  The carriage seen with Sir Clement reminds me of Emma and Mr. Elton.  Evelina and her low connections are so similar to Elizabeth and the Bennets (though Mme Duval makes Mrs. Bennet look like the epitome of grace and refinement).  Evelina, like Lizzy Bennet, has a "passion for solitary walking."  Evelina and Lord Orville foreshadow  Elizabeth and Darcy.  In her juvenile novel Love & Friendship, Jane Austen hilariously parodies the more ludicrous parts of novels like Evelina - in her more mature work, Austen takes the best of Frances Burney and refines it.

Evelina as a Sentimental Novel

A sentimental novel relies on emotion, both in the response of the characters and the response of the reader.  The capacity to feel, and to show feelings, was thought to be a mark of high moral character.  Sentimentalism as a philosophy favored the untutored "naturalness" of the country person over the cultivated "civilized" nature of the society person.  We often think of the 18th century as the Age of Reason, characterized by rationalism.  Sentimentalism is a countercurrent - one that led to Romanticism later in the century.  Evelina, raised in rural seclusion, exhibits sensitivity, natural goodness, fine feeling, and distress at the misfortunes of others.  Thus she is the perfect sentimental "type," and her character is used by Burney to satirize and critique "cultured" society.   

Evelina was a wild ride!  I'm glad I read it, and look forward to reading more by Frances Burney, and more 18th century novels.  I haven't spent a lot of time in this century, and reading Evelina has helped me to find my feet.  I'm learning as I go!

 

Read for the Epistolary Novel category in the Tea and Ink Society 2024 Classics Reading Challenge and for the Classics Club.

Ruth by Elizabeth Gaskell

Beautifully and sensitively written, radical in its compassion and redemptive vision, Elizabeth Gaskell's lesser-known novel Ruth shines gently in obscurity, like its titular heroine. Gaskell explores the plight of the fallen woman through the story of young Ruth Hilton.  Orphaned and naive, Ruth is charmed by rake Henry Bellingham, who induces her to run away to Wales with him.  She is ultimately abandoned by her lover  and finds herself with child.  Nearly driven to a desperate act, she is befriended by Dissenting minister Thurston Benson and his sister Faith.  Rather than condemn and ostracize Ruth for her sin, the Bensons treat Ruth with charity and kindness, offering her care and protection.  At the Bensons' behest, Ruth assumes a new surname and a new identity as a young widow. Ruth proves herself a devoted mother.  Admired for her gentle spirit, piety, and maternal love, Ruth becomes an almost Madonna-like figure.    She earns a living by sewing, and takes a position as a governess in a neighboring house.  When her secret finally comes to light, she is shunned by many. Ruth finds work as a nurse during a typhus epidemic, and nurses Henry Bellingham back to health at cost to her own in an act of true self-sacrifice. 

Gaskell's novel is deeply Christian.  She indicts shallow respectability and hypocrisy, instead presenting a vision of truly Christ-like charity, compassion, and sacrifice.  Ruth as a character is layered in Biblical allusions and identities.  Like her Biblical namesake, she is a stranger in a strange land, adopting a new people as her own, and metaphorically gleaning to support herself and her son.  In addition, we see Ruth take on the symbolic roles of Magdalen, Madonna, and Christ.  The ending of the book is not meant to be a tragedy; the Christian story never is. 

The novel contains other interesting characters and subplots.  I really enjoyed how the characters' lives twined together in their little community.  I loved the relationship between Ruth and the Bensons, as they gradually took the place of the family Ruth was so sadly lacking.    Another wonderful thing about the writing is the dramatic tension that is held for much of the book, as Ruth bears the heavy burden of her secret and fears discovery.   In this respect, it reminded me a bit of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë, published just five years previously.  Helen Graham hides away with her son in a place far distant from home, under an assumed name, pretending to be a young widow... some obvious parallels to Ruth.  Helen and Ruth have even more in common in their acts of charity towards men who have wronged them.  Both novels deal with social issues surrounding women, both are suspenseful and engaging, and both definitely merit re-reading in the future. 

Classics Club Spin #37

I'm so excited to be participating in my very first Classics Club Spin!  This is a fun game played to determine which classic you will read next.  You begin by creating a numbered Spin List of 20 books remaining on your Classics Club Challenge.  Then, Lady Fortuna spins her wheel and whichever number rises to the top launches the corresponding book on your list straight to the top of your TBR pile.

Here is my Spin List:

1. Kipps - H.G. Wells
2. We Have Always Lived in the Castle - Shirley Jackson
3. The Castle of Otranto - Horace Walpole
4. Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys
5. The Grasmere and Alfoxden Journals - Dorothy Wordsworth
6. The Canterbury Tales - Geoffrey Chaucer
7. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Mary Wollstonecraft
8. The Travels of Sir John Mandeville
9. A Journal of the Plague Year - Daniel Defoe
10. Piers Ploughman - William Langland
11. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
12. The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway
13. He Knew He Was Right - Anthony Trollope
14. The Forsyte Saga - John Galsworthy
15. Faust - Goethe
16. Lady Audley's Secret - Mary Elizabeth Braddon
17. Shirley - Charlotte Bronte
18. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
19. The Day of the Triffids - John Wyndham
20. Vera - Elizabeth von Arnim

Since I have just started my Classics Club Challenge, I decided to leave even more up to chance and made use of a random number generator to create my list, making a couple of substitutions when I already had reading plans for the books selected, or when I felt the book was just too long to read in a set time.  I did, however, allow He Knew He Was Right to remain, just to add an Element of Terror to the spin (it's 952 pages long).  

I find out which book I'll be reading on Sunday!

Update:  THE WHEEL HAS SPOKEN!  I will be reading The Travels of Sir John Mandeville!