Evelina: or, The History of a Young Lady’s Entrance into the World Study Guide

Frances Burney was born in Norfolk, England, in 1752. She and her five siblings began writing and privately acting out plays together when they were young. As a child, Burney also worked temporarily as a servant for King George III’s wife, the Queen of England and Ireland. Burney was a keen writer from a young age and secretly wrote her first novel, Evelina, in 1778. Novel-writing was not seen as a suitable career for a woman at the time, and Evelina was published anonymously soon after its completion. Burney also hid her writing from her father, but after he read Evelina, he guessed that Burney wrote it. Eventually, Burney’s name got out, and she developed a reputation in the literary world. Evelina sold many copies, and people were fascinated and scandalized by the idea of its female author. Burney wrote three more novels (Cecilia, Camilla, and The Wanderer) after this, which were all extremely popular. In 1793, Burney married a French nobleman who had been exiled during the French Revolution and gave birth to her son, Alexander, in 1794. The family travelled widely together but lived in France during the Napoleonic Wars. Burney and her family then relocated to Bath in England. Burney died in 1840. Several of her extensive diaries were published posthumously, and she became famous for the historical insight into 18th-century life that her personal writing gave.

Evelina was written and set in 18th-century England. Upper-class British society in this period was dominated by class, and social mobility was largely impossible. Burney satirizes this rigid social system throughout her novel and parodies the idea that nobles are inherently virtuous just because they are born upper-class. Burney also satirizes 18th-century society’s preoccupation with etiquette and manners, which organized social interaction in this period. The heroine, Evelina’s, natural sensibility throughout the novel also draws attention to 18th-century philosophical ideas about looking at the world with an empathetic emotional perspective, rather than a rational scientific one. This perspective was gaining momentum in this period and would later influence the 19th-century Romantic movement. Evelina also draws attention to misogyny in 18th-century society and the women’s lack of rights, protections, and financial opportunities during this time. Additionally, 18th-century England was often at war with France, and this is referred to in Madame Duval’s constant struggle with Captain Mirvan: Madame Duval has married a French nobleman, while Captain Mirvan is an English naval officer who fights against the French. During Burney’s lifetime, England went to war with France again when Napoleon invaded Europe.

Evelina is an example of a sentimental novel, a genre that was extremely popular in the 18th century and usually documented the adventures of an emotionally sensitive (often referred to as sensible or sentimental) hero or heroine as they navigated fashionable society. Other examples of sentimental novels from this period include Laurence Sterne’s Sentimental Journey (1768), Henry Mackenzie’s The Man of Feeling (1771), and Tobias Smollett’s The Expedition of Humphry Clinker (1771). Evelina is also an epistolary novel, or a book that is told entirely through letters that the characters write to one another. This style was popular in this period because of best-selling contemporary novels like Samuel Richardson’s Pamela or Pierre de Laclos’s Dangerous Liaisons, a French novel about court scandals. With its descriptions of urban social life and observations of class and manners, Evelina is also similar to the “novel of manners,” like William Thackeray’s Vanity Fair or Jane Austen’s collected works. Austen’s novels, like Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility, draw heavily upon aspects of Burney’s work, such as the love triangle that Evelina finds herself embroiled in between Lord Orville and Sir Clement, and the comedic descriptions of family life. Burney’s love triangle formula is also a popular element of modern young adult and romance novels, such as Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series and Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games trilogy.