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- Title
Assuming Innocence: The Ingénue's Satire in Frances Burney's Evelina.
- Authors
Lu, Lillian
- Abstract
For most readers, the primary satirist in Frances Burney's first novel, Evelina (1778), is Burney herself, leaving Evelina a narratorial avatar for the author. Seeking to continue Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's project of pluralizing the ways in which we talk about innocence—especially feminine innocence—this article argues that Burney's eponymous narrator Evelina is both ingénue and satirist, and that Evelina's innocence is a vehicle for her satire. In so arguing, this article intervenes in the diegetic as well as decades-long scholarly debate about whether Evelina is innocent or cunning, new to the ways of the world or intelligent. When these binaries are challenged and Evelina's innocence and intellect are read together, Burney's first novel opens up for further feminist readings, as well as more productive avenues of thought about feminine subjectivity and epistemologies.
- Subjects
EVELINA: Or, the History of a Young Lady's Entrance Into the World (Book); BURNEY, Fanny, 1752-1840; 18TH century fiction; 18TH century literature; FEMINIST fiction; NARRATORS in literature; WOMEN in literature
- Publication
Eighteenth Century Fiction, 2020, Vol 33, Issue 1, p57
- ISSN
0840-6286
- Publication type
Literary Criticism
- DOI
10.3138/ecf.33.1.57