Author: serobins

            When reading Clarissa, I became interested in the way the protagonist interacted with the public sphere, the way reputation and public perception influenced the actions and reactions of the characters in the novel, especially for those women operating in the space between childhood and marriage.  Though this initially caught my attention because it is thematically related to a creative project of mine, as the semester had progressed I’ve been attentive to the way this has been addressed in the other eighteenth-century novels we’ve read. All of the female protagonists’ actions in these books have been explicitly limited, and at times determined, by the “eye” of the larger society, and so for the annotated bibliography I sought out articles that addressed this facet of Frances Burney’s Evelina.

            The first article I read was Timothy Dykstal’s “‘Evelina’ and the Culture Industry,” which was a good starting place as it talked about a change in the middle class’s (and think the characters we’ve been concerned with so far would all fall into this social category) interaction with the public sphere in the eighteenth century, something that I was previously vaguely aware of but hadn’t connected with the books we’ve been reading in this class. While I found the framework of dividing the “benefits” of art into three categories to be somewhat reductive, it was instructive to read his analysis of how women in the eighteenth century were and were not allowed to engage critically with art. I’d been considering the ways in which behavior was proscribed but not thought. Dykstal also asserts that culture (with the exception of literature) in Evelina has been reduced to spectacle—e.g., balls and frivolous entertainments—and I would say that this pressure to see and be seen, in a certain light, of course, is one of the limitations placed on Evelina (and other women) as well as a critique of popular culture overall.

            Kristina Straub’s and Julie Parks’ essays are more tightly focused on the period of courtship, a time during which both authors assert that women have the most personal power and social importance. In essence, it is the time in which they most operate in the public sphere.Straub in particular is interested in the devaluation that follows this period, whether via marriage or old maidhood, and the tension between that truth and ideals of romantic love. She points out the way Burney embodies this in mature female characters; being so focused on Evelina herself, I confess that this is something I didn’t attend to on my own. Parks explores similar topics, but with an emphasis on the idea of the automaton (which I’m still wrapping my head around) and the chasm between a private sense of self-consciousness and being continually scrutinized in the public sphere.

            Everything about my final project still feels nebulous, but its direction might be something of a synthesis of aspects of these three articles. I’m interested in the idea of the coming out period as being one of unprecedented social clout but also one filled with peril and scrutiny. In particular, I’m thinking about the way this effects women’s private and social senses of self. In terms of texts, I’m undecided as so far it feels like there could be a fruitful analysis along these lines for all of the novels we’ve read so far. As far as a complementary text goes, half of me wants to find a contemporaneous novel that handles this tension in somewhat different manner, though I’m also interested in the idea of looking at the same topic in a later piece of literature. Suggestions/thoughts welcome!

I’ve been interested in the ways in which Evelina interacts with culture and functions in the public sphere, so that’s what I focused on here.

Dykstal, Timothy. “‘Evelina’ and the Culture Industry.” Criticism, vol. 37, no. 4 (1995), pp. 559–81.

Jürgen Habermas has posited that as the eighteenth-century middle class entered the public sphere and began to form their own opinions of art, they developed critical thinking skills that were eventually applied to politics and social issues. This is the framework in which Dykstal discusses Evelina’s relationship to culture. The author describes three benefits of art—moral instruction, enlightenment, and connoisseurship—and explores the degree to which Evelina (and eighteenth-century women more broadly) engage with them. Ultimately, he asserts that, with the notable exception of reading, art is reduced to spectacle in Evelina and the benefits proposed by Habermas are absent.

Park, Julie. “Pains and Pleasures of the Automaton: Frances Burney’s Mechanics of Coming Out.” Eighteenth-Century Studies, vol. 4, no. 3 (2006), pp. 23–49.

In her three novels, Frances Burney focuses on the time period between childhood and marriage, and Park examines the way in which she portrays the relationship between the private minds of her female characters and their public life. Park believes that the coming out process involves a “compulsive identification with the automaton” and explores Burney’s portrayal of her heroines through that lens. While she sees Burney as identifying her characters with the automaton, she does not simply parrot a cultural conceit. Instead, Park asserts, Burney uses the novels to explore the degree to which individual affect can exist within automatized femininity.

Straub, Kristina. “Fanny Burney’s ‘Evelina’ and the ‘Gulphs, Pits, and Precipices’ of Eighteenth-Century Female Life. The Eighteenth Century, vol. 2, no. 3 (1986), pp. 230–46.

Straub analyzes how Frances Burney portrays the power and social importance of women in Evelina. Specifically, she is interested in the differences between women during courtship—when they are most in the public sphere—and afterward, and in the tension between the ideals of romantic love and the powerlessness that often followed marriage in the eighteenth century. Through a close reading of the text, Straub asserts that though Evelina is subversive is some ways, it ultimately reinforces patriarchal notions of power: female power must acknowledge and defer to male power.

I’m interested in how Richardson utilizes the epistolary form (it’s one of the more successful epistolary novels I’ve read) and the presence of an “editor” in Clarissa, so I focused on that here.

Babb, Howard S. “Richardson’s Narrative Mode in Clarissa.” Studies in English Literature, vol. 16, no. 3, 1976, pp. 452–60.

Babb examines the way two particular aspects of the narrative mode in Clarissa function: the repeated creation of opposed alternatives (e.g., will Clarissa stay with her family or run away with Lovelace) and the controlled release of information through epistolary techniques to create a text that is always “in motion.” Much of the article is dedicated to a close reading of one letter illustrating these methods. The author also explores the way Richardson dramatizes Lovelace’s fluctuating emotions in this letter.

Johnson, Glen M. “Richarson’s ‘Editor’ in Clarissa. The Journal of Narrative Technique, vol. 10, no. 2, 1980, pp. 99–114.

Johnson’s article aims to correct what he sees as an oversight in previous discussions of Clarissa’s narrative techniques: the role of the Richardson’s “editor.” He both examines the functions of­­­­ the editorial insertions themselves, categorizing them as editorial and interpretive, and looks at the effects of simply having editor. He argues that as well as shaping the reader’s interpretation, the editor lends the book verisimilitude and authority. Ultimately, Johnson makes the case that the editor is a crucial component of both the drama and the tension between intellect and emotion in the novel.

Kaplan, Fred. “‘Our Short Story’: The Narrative Devices of Clarissa.” Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900, vol. 11, no. 3, 1971, pp. 549–62.

Kaplan explores how Richardson takes advantage of the epistolary form—and the presence of an “editor”—to handle and manipulate time in Clarissa. He begins with the media res opening the novel and goes on to look at how Richardson utilizes flashback, narrative foreshortening, chronological discontinuity, summary, the delayed release of information, reported scene/dialogue, and other techniques in the novel. The way in which the “clock” of the novel—one year—is deployed is also examined, most particularly in an analysis of two exchanges of letters.