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Sensibility in Frances Burney's Novels

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Sensibility in Frances Burney's Novels 1È2 SENSIBILITY IN FRANCES BURNEY'S NOVEI.S Kathleen M. Twidale, M.A. A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of English, University of Adelaide . July, 1994 /\n^r.' de *\ \qq5 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page STATEMENT ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS lll CHAPTER 1 Introduction.. I CHAPTER 2 Frances Burney - The Novelist 9 CHAPTER 3 The Background to the Concept of Sensibility in the Eighteenth Century 44 CHAPTER 4 Frances Burney and Sensibility 85 CHAPTER 5 Evelina r43 CHAPTER 6 Cecilía 184 CHAPTER 7 Camilla 217 CHAPTER 8 The Wanderer 26t CHAPTER 9 Conclusion .. 308 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS 320 WORKS CTTED 320 O|IITER WORKS C'ONSULTED 334 APPENDIX A 339 APPENDIX B 349 i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to acknowledge the support of my supervisors and thank them for their help and advice. + lll SENSIBILITY IN FRANCES BURNEY'S NOVELS CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Although a considerable amount of literature and research exists on the role of sensibility in the novels of, for instance, Richardson, Sterne, Henry Mackenzie and Austen, there has been no full investigation of this theme as it emerges in Burney's novels. This thesis proposes to go some way toward filling this gap by examining how Burney uses the word "sensibility" in her novels; to explore what it appears to connote to her; how she uses it to define her characters; and how she presents her interpretation of the world of "female difficulties"l through the conventions of the "novel of Sensibility."2 Burney's novels perhaps cannot strictly be defined as novels of sensibility: the satire and comedy in the novels and the examination of the good and bad aspects of the cult of sensibility make this description too narrow. However, sensibility is an important element in the novels, and Burney does use some of the conventions of the novel of sensibility to reach her reader. One of Burney's methods, as I Frances Burney, Tlv Wønderer; or, Femøle Dfficuttics (1814), ed- Margaret Anne Doody, Robert L. Mack, and Peter Sabor, introd. Margaret Anne Doody, The World's Classics (Oxford: Oxford LlP, 1991). (All references to this edition. Volume number and page number in parenttnsis in text.) 2 U.U. Abrams, A Glossary of Literary Terms,3rd ed. (New York Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971) 88 will be demonstrated, is to use the theme of "virtue in distress"3 to appeal to her readers' sensibilities: their "readiness to feel compassion for suffering, and to be moved by the pathetic in literature or aÍt."4 The aim of this thesis is to demonstrate that, though Burney, iin" Austen and Wollstonecraft, recognised the dangers of some aspects of the cult of sensibility (which was an important philosophical, social and literary preoccupation of the period), she shows in her depiction of the characters in her novels that sensibility is a necessary part of the thinking, feeling, human being. In this, she was following in the tradition of philosophers in the school of Locke who argued for sensibility - the ability to sympathise or empathise with others - as the distinction between humans and the lower animals. It became, in fact, a measure of morality. Several critics have made reference to Burney's novels when discussing the novels of sensibility of the period. Gaty Kelly, for instance, refers to Burney as "the acknowledged master of the novel of manners and sentiment [... .]" pointing out that "[a]ll of Burney's novels rely on the classic situation of novels of Sensibility, namely 'virtue in distress' or 'female difficulties'."5 Kelly suggests that Burney "set a mark for dozens of followers," citing Elizabeth Inchbald, Cha¡lotte Smith, Maria Edgeworth, Jane Austen, "and even Sir'Walter Scott" as those influenced by her models (Kelly 45). 3 îre epigraph to R-F. Brissenden's Virttrc in Dßtress comes ftom I-ady Bradshaigh's letter to Richardson when she writes agoposof Clarissa: "Tears I would choose to shed for virû¡e in distress." R.F. Brissenden, Virtu¿ in Distress: Studies in tlu Novel of Sentimenfrom Riclurdson to Sade (-ondon and Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1974) (hereinafter referred to as Virtrc in Distress); Thc Correspondence of Samu¿l Riclnrdson, ed. Anna Laetitia Barbauld, 6 vols. ([nndon: Printed for Richard Phillips, 1804) IV:178. 4 ffu O$ord English Dictionary, "sensibility," definition (6). (All references to tlrc Second Edition.) 5 Gary Kelly, Englis h Ficrton of the Romantic Period: 1789-1830 (-ondon: Longman, 1989) 45. 2 Muriel Masefield looks at this aspect of her novels in Women Novelists from Fanny Burney to George Eliot.6 Joyce Hemlow in her History of Fanny Burney places Evelina in the "age of sensibility."T More recently, G.J. Barker-Benfield makes reference to Burney in his The Culture of Sensibility: Sex and Socíety in Eighteenth-Century Britain published in 1992.8 However, although recognised as an author who wrote novels of sentiment, there has been no detailed analysis of the use of the word "sensibility" in Burney's novels or of how she uses it to define her characters and manipulate the reader through the devices established in the eighteenth-century novel of sensibility. As will be discussed in Chapter 3, in the eighteenth century the concept of sensibility was central to the philosophical, scientific and, in modern terms, psychological investigation of man and his relationship to society and the environment. The theories of philosophers such as Locke and his followers, influenced as they were by empirical scientists of the period, stressed that all knowledge was based on the evidence of sense perception; that our ideas of the world around us were all subjective. These theories, together with those which , stressed man's benevolent instincts and the importance of sensibility, the ability to feel for others, as a cohesive force in society, influenced writers such as Richardson, Sterne, Mackenzie and a generation of authors who explored these themes in the "novels of sensibility" of the period. The benevolent 6 Urrtiel Masefield, Women Novelists from Fanny Burney to George Eliot (London: Ivor Nicholson and Watson, 1934). 7 Joy"nHemlow, Tlw History of Fømy Burney (Oxford: Cla¡endon P, 1958) 97 (hereinafær referred to a^s History) 8 C. ¡. Ba¡ker-Benfi eld,Thc Culture of Sensibility: Sex and Sociery in Eighteenth-Cenrury Britain (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1992). 3 aspects of the cult of sensibility are particularly important in Burney's novels, as will be discussed in later chapters. Burney's novels are not always included in this genre; rather they were seen in the past as "conduct books" or novels of manners. However, there is no doubt that she was influenced by Richardson and his successors in the genre of the novel of sensibility. An ambivalent word, "sensibility" was much discussed at the time when Burney was writing. It was a word which carried both positive and negative connotations, especially during the course of the French Revolution when it became "tainted" with radicalism. The word "sensibility" occurs many times in Burney's last three novels. She stresses the need for sensibility in the exemplary human being, that "capacity for refined emotion; delicate sensitiveness of taste; also, readiness to feel compassion for suffering, and to be moved by the pathetic in literature or art" which was so important in the context of Burney's novels. In all her novels her exemplary characters are endowed with this attribute in association with the ability to reason from the evidence of the senses and from experience. The literary critical approach adopted in this thesis is that of a close textual examination of Burney's four novels to examine how she uses the word sensibility itself, what are its contexts, and what is its meaning within those contexts. Burney's appeal to her readers' sensibilities and her attempt to educate those who are deficient in this quality are also explored. It will be argued that sensibility - a refined intuitive response to others - is seen by Burney as indispensable to the individual and of benefit to society as a whole. The thesis is not written from a post-modernist, feminist literary critical stance, though such studies have undoubtedly opened up 4 texts to interesting and rewarding readings. However, as the novels which form the focus of this investigation were written by a woman about women in a time when expectations of women were different from those of today, there will obviously be an emphasis on Burney's depiction of the role and, sometimes, the plight of women. The novels all focus on the experiences of a young woman and all bear the name of the heroine in their titles, except The Wanderer, whose anonymity is an important element in the novel. All these heroines are shown to be women of sensibility, as will be discussed later. The obverse side of sensibility, when perverted into a cult, is seen to inhibit women in their full development as human beings, making them instead trivial and emotional creatures, unable to think for themselves. Burney shows that this is how many men perceive women and that women become trapped in the role ascribed to them as emotional, sensuous creatures. This perception of women on the part of some men, and the tendency of some women to conform to that perception in order to attain some little power, is demonstrated through Burney's description of minor characters in the novels. Chapter 2 looks at Burney's personal background and her growth as an author. It will show the changes in criticism of Burney's work from contemporary critics' views of her as a writer in the comedy of manners genre, to mid-twentieth-century analyses of her novels as "conduct books." Currently, feminist writers aÍe discovering a more militant message in Burney's fictions.
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