FANNY BURNEY, NOVELIST, A STUDY IN TECHNIQUE

211 Pages·012.997 MB·English

by  WHITE, EUGENE

Copyrighted by
Eugene White
195?.
FANNY BURNEY, NOVELIST
A STUDY IN TECHNIQUE
BY
EUGENE WHITE
B.S., University of Illinois, 1946
M.A., University of Illinois, 1947
THESIS
SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS
FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN ENGLISH
IN THE GRADUATE COLLEGE OF THE UNIVERSITY
OF ILLINOIS, 1950
URBANA. ILLINOIS
/'
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS
THE GRADUATE COLLEGE
August 7, 1950
I HEREBY R ECO MAI EXT) THAT THE THESIS PRM>\KED UNDER M\
Eugene White
SUPERVISION BY.
Fanny Burney, Novelist
ENTITLED.
A Study in Technique
BE ACCEPTED IX PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REOL IREAIEVTS FOR
Doctor of Philosophy in English
THE DEGREE OF
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Recoirmiendation concuned in
Committee
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t Required for doctor's degree but not for master's
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CONTENTS
Chapter Page
I. The General Picture 1
II. Plot 21
1. Type m
2. Originality 26
5. Probability , g8
4. Arrangement of Events 33
III. Characterization 38
1. Methods Used 38
*(£. Depth and Development 47
IV. Manner of Presentation 61
1. Pictorial vs . Dramatic 61
2. Center of Interest 74
3. Point of view 80
4. Use of Setting 86
V. Style 94
1. Johnsonese 94
2. Diction 97
3. Sentence (Structure Ill
4. Dialogue 117
5. Humor and Satire 1^5
6. Sentiment 131
7. Moral Tone 141
8. Surru.iary 151
VI. Pelat ion ship to Other Authors 155
1. General Influences 155
2. Provost 158
3. Marivaux ICO
4. hicnardson 164
5. Fielding 167
6 . i.Ir s . Hayv:ood 169
7. Johnson 176
6. Her Successors 178
VII. The Total Impression 183
Bibliography 105
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My sincere thanks
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Professor Arthur W. Secord
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I
THE GENiiii^L PICTURE
Fanny Burney wrote four novels, Evelina. Cecilia.
Camilla, and The Wanderer, the first one published in
1778 and the last In 1814. During that time, from a
shy and retiring maiden of twenty-six years she became
a successful and lionized author, a close friend of Mrs.
Thrale find Dr. Johnson, Keeper of the Robes to Queen
Charlotte, and Comtesse Piochard D TArblay, wife of
Lafayettefs General D*Arblay. She kept a diary most of
her life, she wrote a few mediocre plays, she edited
hc'r father's memoirs. She outlived her husband and only
son, ijer family and most of her friends, even her suc
cessor Jane Austen. She died in 1840, an old lady of
eighty-eight.
But Fanny Burney has left us records of inestimable
value and charm, pictures of the life and times of a by
gone age with a social Value almost equivalent "co tneir
literary worth. For Miss Burney moved in circles that
included an unusual number of tne great and near great in
literature, music, statesmanship, art, and fashion.
Her father was Dr. Burney, the musician, a gregarious,
captivating little man, whose home became a meeting place
for the lions of society and those who lionized them. Charles
Burney had married Esther Sleepe, of HugenoL de-cent, v/ho
bore him three sons and four daughters. The oldest son, James,
s.
entered the navy at the age of ten, sailed twice around the world
with Captain Cook, and eventually became an admiral. The second
son, Charles, died early, and the youngest, also named Charles,
became a famous Greek scholar and Chaplain to George III. The
daughters were Esther or Hetty, Fanny, Susanna, and Charlotte.
Mrs. Burney died shortly after Charlotte's birth, and Burney later
married Elizabeth Allen, the widow of a wealthy Lynn wine-merchant,
who already had three children. Two children were born to the new
Mrs. Burney, Richard and Sarah Harriet, the latter of whom became
a novelist, though hardly a distinguished one. It may well be
imagined, then, that the Burney residence seldom lacked activity.
Garrick was a family friend who bounced in at odd hours and
entertained the Burney children with his exuberant impromptu act
ing and ludicrous mimicry. Kit Smart gave Fanny a rose given him
"by a fair lady—though not so fair as youj" George Colman the
elder and his wife, the writer Dr. Hawkesworth, the Sheridans,
Mrs. Brooke, and Dr. Shebbeare all came within her orbit. To her
father's musical evenings came such celebrities as the Italian
singer Millico, the composer Sacchini, the violinist Celestini,
and Signora Agujari, "detta la Bastardini, from some misfortune
that preceded her birth." La Gabriella and her consort Rauzzini
failed to measure up to expectations, but then the Agujari had
won the hearts of the Burneys. Prince Orloff, the fabulous Russian;
came to hear Susan Burney and her cousin play, and the Tahitian
Omai, friend of Fanny's brother James, came to dinner and charmed
everyone with his perfect manners. Reynolds, Burke, and Hastings
all figure in her diaries, along with scores of lesser known but
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equally interesting personages.
The publication of Evelina brought Fanny into Mrs. Thrale's
circle. She lived for long periods at Streatham and was petted
and made mock love to by her admired Dr. Johnson, who lived with
the Thrales. She met Mrs. Montagu and others of the bluestockings.
She became one of Mrs. Thrale's showpieces herself. Then she spent
five unhappy years as Keeper of the Robes to Queen Charlotte, but
her record of those years has given us the best and most intimate
picture of the court and the unfortunate sufferings of George III
that has come down to us.
The French Revolution drove to England groups of refugees
who had been loyal to Louis XVI, and among them, in the little
colony headed by Mme. Stael at Juniper Hall, was M. Alexandre
D'Arblay, former adjutant-general to Lafayette. Fanny's sister
Susan lived at Mickleham, nearby, and became intensely interested
in the French group. Fanny was invited down, she and General
D'Arblay fell in love, and over the protests of her father she
married this handsome foreigner, Catholic and penniless though he
was, at the age of forty-one. In spite of its unpromising pros
pects, their marriage was a happy one. They lived in Camilla
Cottage, built with the proceeds of the novel Camilla, until
affairs in France made it advisable for them to go there to look
after the General's interests.
During her ten-years residence in France, and to defray the
expenses of her son's education at Oxford, Madame D'Arblay wrote
I most of her fourth and last novel, The Wanderer« or Female
k
lj\ Difficulties, and had it published in England upon her return
i
h there. But the vivacity, spontaneity, and youthful high spirits
'It 4.
that had captivated London in Evelina and Cecilia were at low ebb
in the novels which Madame D'Arblay wrote primarily for money.
The first two novels were written for the joy of writing, because
Fanny could not help writing. They pictured a society in which
she moved as a fascinated observor. Her years at court, her
acclaim as an author, her developing consciousness of the instruc
tional function of the novel, her experiences in Revolutionary
France all had their effect in changing her outlook. She affected
a style or unconsciously adopted one that retained and exaggerated
all that was bad in her early writing and lost much of what had
given it originality and freshness.
But the phenomenal success of her first two novels assured
her later ones a reading. In the period from 1778 to 1789,
according to Joseph Bunn Heidler, most of the correspondence in
literary circles centered about Fanny Burney's Evelina and Cecilia.
Whether their reactions were favorable or unfavorable, the letter
writers of the period were interested in discussing the appeal
and the characterization of the novel of manners as written by
Miss Burney. In his story of the publisher Mathew Carey, Earl
L. Bradsher quotes from a letter to Longman and Company of England,
dated April 15, 1817, asking for some arrangement by which Carey's
company in New York might receive "such new works that come out
as may be likely to bear publication in this country." He v/rites,
"The History, from 1700 to 1800, of English Criticism of
Prose Fiction," University of Illinois Studies in Language and
Literature, XIII (May, 19S8J7 141.
Hi
. n
asEri-jSEarraff^xnErg
5.
"We should wish to receive every new work of popularity and
particularly those of Miss Porter, Lord Byron, Miss Edgeworth,
W. Scott, Leigh Hunt, Author of Waverley, Moore, Miss Burney,
Mrs. Taylor, Lady Morgan, Dugald Stewart, etc., etc.»s
These are the works, then, which have given Fanny Burney a
secure, even though minor, niche in the history of the novel.
She made use of the elements she found in her reading, but she
added certain new touches that had a great deal to do with shaping
the course which the novel was to take. It is our purpose to
analyze the technique which Miss Burney used in her novels, to
see how she worked and to try to evaluate her success in a field
that was relatively uncharted and still suspect.
A study of the technique of a novelist can lead not only to
a fuller appreciation of his work but to a better understanding
of the period In which he wrote. Regardless of his genius he is
to some extent the product of his literary and social environ
ment. What he makes of his heritage tells us much about him as
an individual; what his heritage makes of him tells us much about
his times. The content of his work, his ideas, his philosophy,
must be matters of first importance. Our first question always
is,"What is the author trying to do?" But a deeper insight into
what he is trying to do can be gained by seeing how he attempts
to do it. His method often reveals more about his thinking and
almost always more about the literary influences that have shaped
him than his words do.
To attempt to discuss writing technique as something apart
Mathew Carey (New York, 1912), p. 79.