Evelina Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Helen Thompson

Critical Essay by Helen Thompson

SOURCE: “Evelina's Two Publics,” in The Eighteenth Century, Vol. 39, No. 2, Summer, 1998, pp. 147-67.

In the following essay, Thompson offers a re-examination of the relationship between Evelina's literary background and the feminist aspects of the novel. Thompson maintains that Evelina must mediate between two distinct publics: that which is aroused by her as a spectacle, and that which is summoned by her literary self.

In concluding a recent volume of essays devoted to Frances Burney's Evelina; or, The History of a Young Lady's Entrance into the World, Margaret Doody makes the following appraisal: “It concerns me that none of these writers seems interested in the background of eighteenth-century literature (literature in its broadest sense) which lies behind Evelina … Attention to the literature does not mean disdaining the biographical approach (after all, what the author has read is an aspect of biography). But it does mean opening up...
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