Fanny Burney: Evelina (1778)

Abstract

One noticeable feature of Fanny Burney’s Evelina is that it presents the reader with characters whose differing views regarding women can be placed into three distinct groupings: (1) the genteel or polite mode; (2) the misogynistic or ‘masculine’ mode; (3) the instrumental-sexual mode. These perspectives are not mutually exclusive, to the extent that statements derived from the genteel mode may be tendentiously employed by those who basically subscribe to the instrumental mode and so on. Burney’s approach involves comparing these three perspectives and indicating to the reader her full support for the first of them. At no point in the novel does she criticise this particular mode, which is accepted and propounded as being morally, practically and aesthetically correct; in contrast, modes (2) and (3) are discredited by Evelina, and those who share her outlook, whenever they appear. How do these forms differ?