The Name of the Father: Social Identity and the Ambition of Evelina
David Oakleaf, University of Calgary
Volume 3, no. 4, July 1991
©McMaster University, 2015. All articles published on the Eighteenth-Century Fiction website are protected by copyright held by Eighteenth-Century Fiction, a journal published by the Faculty of Humanities at McMaster University.
ABSTRACT
In Evelina Frances Burney adopts (and adapts) a narrative cliché of eighteenth-century fiction. In a position to attract sexual attentions for which there is no appropriate social expression, a worthy but low-born or disinherited protagonist nevertheless — this is the comic version of the story — acquires an appropriate social station and marries the object of desire. Of course Burney’s Evelina is not illegitimate, like Fielding’s Tom Jones or Smollett’s Humphry Clinker, lower-class, like Richardson’s Pamela; or both, like Defoe’s Moll Flanders. She is the daughter of a wealthy baronet whose refusal to acknowledge her sophisticates without disguising the familiar story. Burney resolves her narrative tension when Evelina wins the paternal acknowledgment that justifies the socially impeccable Lord Orville’s proposal of marriage. Evelina claims her name, surrenders it for a better, and hastens on the last page “to the arms of the best of men.”
Other ECF articles on the topic of “Frances Burney” include:
“Black, Patched and Pennyless”: Race and Crime in Burney’s The Wanderer
by TARA CZECHOWSKI (ECF 25.4, Summer 2013)
Dangerous Fortune-telling in Frances Burney’s Camilla
by JENNIFER LOCKE (ECF 25.4, Summer 2013)
Rewriting Radicalism: Wollstonecraft in Burney’s The Wanderer
by TARA GHOSHAL WALLACE (ECF 24.3, Spring 2012)
©McMaster University, 2015. This copyright covers the exclusive rights to reproduce and distribute the article, including in electronic forms, reprints, translations, photographic reproductions, or similar. While reading for personal use is encouraged, Eighteenth-Century Fiction articles may not be reproduced, broadcast, published, or re-disseminated without the prior written permission of Eighteenth-Century Fiction at McMaster University. Republication, systematic reproduction, posting in electronic form, such as on a web site or in a searchable database, or other uses of this material is not allowed. The copyright in this website includes without limitation the text, computer code, artwork, photographs, images, music, audio, video, and audio-visual material on this website and is owned by McMaster University. ©McMaster University 2015.